Federico Clavarino is a photographer currently based in Madrid, where he works on his own projects and teaches at Blank Paper School of photography. So far, he has published three of his works in the book form: Ukraina Pasport (2011, Fiesta Ediciones), Italia o Italia (2014, Akina Books), and The Castle (2016, Dalpine). All of these have been exhibited internationally. His last project, Hereafter , was supported by the 20th FotoPres La Caixa grant, and is currently being shown at CaixaForum in Barcelona. Federico teaches workshops and gives lectures on a regular basis at schools, photography centres and universities all around Europe. He is now represented by Viasaterna in Milan.
Miren Pastor holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country. She currently lives and works in Madrid where she develops her work as a photographer and cultural agent. She studied a masters degree in Photographic Studies at Blank Paper School, where she is also its coordinator since 2009. She has published two photobooks of her project Bidean, which has also been exhibited internationally. In 2016 she was the winner of the ING Unseen Talent Award Public Prize. She has worked as an assistant for various artists, like Christian Patterson, Cristina Iglesias, Daniel Canogar and Roberto Coromina and she is also a founding member of MOB, a web platform for the dissemination of culture, and part of La Troupe collective.
It would be hard to give a truthful, objective and exhaustive overview of the many diverse practices, contexts and works that have breathed new life into the contemporary Spanish photography scene in the last few years, and to do so in a few posts is just impossible. This is only one of the reasons why, when we were asked to curate a few entries for a Focus On Spain section in the Yet Magazine website, we decided to do the opposite and talk about things we know because they are very close to us.
Over the past ten years in Spain we have witnessed a period of intense vitality centered around the medium of photography, and a number of works, authors, curators, and publishers have managed to make their way into a more international scene. These include photographers like Cristina De Middel, Ricardo Cases, Laia Abril or David Jiménez, to cite only a few, independent publishers like Dalpine, Phree or Ca L'Isidret, a number of photography schools, festivals like Fiebre Photobook in Madrid or DocField in Barcelona. Right now, Macba is hosting one of the most extensive exhibitions on the photobook ever made. Nonetheless, we feel that there are many things that are important to us and that have played key roles in our personal development both as photographers and as actors in the field of Spanish photography and that are more or less unknown to a broader public living outside of Spain.
We felt the easiest way for us to awake some interest into more local realities was to ask some people from our most immediate surroundings to write a series of brief texts about what they do, and sometimes about what other people do. We wanted the posts to address a wide range of things, from book projects to collective initiatives, educational projects and (why not?) also parties.
We really hope you enjoy them, and that you find them interesting enough as to come over and check out all the other fresh stuff that is going on in Spain at the moment.
Website
federicoclavarino.comwww.mirenpastor.com
