Photography exhibition by Manel Sanz at the Quei15 creative workshop
Quei15 Barcelona's exhibition space is showing, until 16 March, Manel Sanz's intimate photographs under the title “Dones Fortes”. A series of black-and-white portraits in which the gaze plays at seeing and being seen.
Through his control of light, Manel achieves an intense black from which the intimacy of each of the nine models who have lent their “self” to the camera emerges.
«We photograph bodies, we photograph people, and through this act we satisfy an atavistic desire: to capture in the copy, in the representation, what man's ever-temporary nature denies us, and so we bequeath to the future presences, illusions of presences, traces of lives that time takes from us and with which we go on to build an extensive, expanded present, from the imprints of the past that become eternal within it and turn into one of its indissoluble components.»
This introduction by Javier García describes the photographic act and the interplay between the gaze of the lens and the thoughts behind the model's retina. And it makes us reflect on today's need – somewhere between playful and unhealthy – to “fix our identity in time” through selfies.
The work, a private collection of the artist's, was first shown 10 years ago. It can now be seen at the Quei15 creative space, a new cultural project rooted in the Parc i la Llacuna neighbourhood, between Poblenou and the right-hand Eixample, which aims to bring creativity and artistic expression closer to local residents.
Manel Sanz's portraits have also served as a starting point for an activity with the children of Tria i Remena (aged between 7 and 12), through a free reinterpretation exercise in which we keep the intensity of the black and white and learn to bring out aspects of the image that the camera does not see. A distinctive stylistic exercise that confronts – and harmonises – two artistic techniques that are often far apart.
These creative workshops are an example of Quei15's close-to-the-community approach, as is the photo set that, under the name Fem retrats: oh, là, là ! , Manel has set up to revive the craft of the neighbourhood portrait photographer. A way of leaving a paper record of those magic moments that digital reality takes away from us.
Women in front of the mirror, a gaze between simulacrum and life. Dones Fortes.
Ilford Multigrade fibre-based baryta paper, 40×50 cm
