“Photography helps us understand reality, the images are like visual annotations in a notebook”
Ángel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera have been working collaboratively as photographers since 1996.
Influenced by both Western and Eastern thinkers and artists, they use the photographic medium to question preconceived ideas about time, space and identity.
Their work achieves a new notion of perception as a key element in understanding not only art but life experience itself.
Their poetic universe invites us to a dreamlike journey.
The beginning of a bird’s flight caught between the hollows of the thicket, glides on the smooth surface of the water, feathers of pearly black or of a snow like white, sparkling of velvety petals …
Their images, between reality and illusion, investigate our relationship with a tangible world. Time, memory and an almost physical presence of beauty run through their work.
To achieve this, Albarrán Cabrera employ multiple photographic procedures: Platinum/palladium, silver gelatin, cyanotype, pigmented printing, etc., which give their images a special texture and adds uniqueness to their art:
“We understand photography as an object, and the photographic medium as a tool that allows us to travel from concept to image and finally to a specific object. We do not want the image to reproduce reality, but we try to create an object that has enough information and interest to become part of the narratives of seeing. That is where each process with its specific characteristics may create a reality with its own style”
Their exhibition is currently on show in Barcelona at Fundación Foto Colectania thru 7 January 2024.
—julija svetlova
Flommist Julija Svetlova is an art historian, freelance researcher and a founder of Neja’s Art Walks, a bespoke provider of art and history-related tours and experiences in London. Julija previously worked as a collection research assistant at the Tate. Copyright © 2023 Julija Svetlova, images © Albarrán Cabrera, top image cropped.
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