ID Project: JORDI BERNADÓ’s new book

Last Wednesday, La Central Llibreria de Barcelona was the setting for the presentation of the latest monograph by Jordi Bernadó, “Project ID”. The event, in collaboration with the Museu Nacional De Catalunya and galeria SENDA, with the participation of the journalist Sergio Vila San Juan.

Jordi Bernadó is a photographer with a cosmopolitan and curious vision, a tireless traveler who has left his mark on the world of photography contemporary. One of his latest works, ID Project , was exhibited at the MNAC during the summer of 2022, and has become in the central axis of a publication that explores the complete work of this artist.

What makes Bernadó’s work so interesting is his “relational” approach. Instead of simply capturing images of his subjects, Bernadó acts as an intermediary between the subject and the audience, asking the subject to choose the place where he wants to be photographed. The result is a stage inhabited by a single person, whose identity is not revealed in the image, but in the accompanying text, written by Laura Ferrero.

This approach creates a territory of social experimentation and offers an alternative to the uniformity of human behavior. Instead of simply observing the subjects, Bernadó involves them in the creative process and makes them full participants in the final result. It is an approach that seeks to establish a relationship of trust between the photographer and the subject, and that allows the final image to be a truer and more authentic representation of the person being photographed.

Alejandro Castellote, for his part, carries out an acute and multifaceted analysis of Bernadó’s career, exploring the different readings that can be made of his work and his artistic approach. The publication, co-published with the MNAC in Barcelona and in collaboration with the Senda gallery in Barcelona, is a work that not only explores the work of an artist, but also delves into the very nature of photography and its ability to connect with the world around us.

During the presentation, Bernadó explained this “relational” approach and how this technique allows him to involve his subjects in the creative process and create more authentic and true images. He also spoke of his love of travel and exploration, and how it has influenced his work. It was an opportunity to discover the work of a unique artist in the world of contemporary photography. “ID Project” is a monograph that not only explores Bernadó’s work, but also delves into the very nature of photography and its ability to connect us with the world around us.

Imma Prieto on “Love Song”, a show by ELENA DEL RIVERO

Conducting: the ritual of gesture

By Imma Prieto, director of Es Baluard, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma

Elena del Rivero has generated new music sheets, compositions constituted in and from the fragment, a palimpsest of memories that create community and collective imagination. Each work is nourished by previous gestures and generates choreographies in which we can intervene from shared thought. All these works accompany each other and are constellations that make up her vital imagination.

In this stellar space other voices resonate, other internal and social movements. In this space that welcomes us today, intimate passages and collective revolts are presented in constant dialogue, all forging her visual writing. Images, words, sound, spaces, her universe flies over us and touches us.

Without this necessary friction, the movement that fosters conduction would not take place, which, in the composer’s words, becomes a universal vocabulary in which music becomes language, made up of gestures and cadences, of fragments and memories of a collective ritual.

Some of the fragments that make up these collages were part of other works that were on the floor of his old studio, located on Cedar Street in New York, the day the attack took place of the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001.

We could imagine that, months later, after collecting the fragments, Butch Morris was being heard in some room in the city. Tunes that coexist and promote frequencies from almost forgotten remnants. It is interesting to point to that gesture before and after something, it is interesting to think together about that universal conduction.

It is convenient to attend to the generated landscapes, to the ritual that surrounds them and allows us to be united, with that pairing of images, rhythms and stories, with that simultaneity that promotes the performativity of the ritual.

Access all the information about the show here:

Opening: 12.01.2023 at 7pm in Galeria SENDA.

Read the complete text in spanish here: