FONS ÀUDIO #20
Sandra Balsells
Sandra Balsells (Barcelona, 1966) was twenty-five when she landed in Croatia in the summer of 1991 as a contributing photojournalist for Britain’s ‘The Times’ newspaper. She had been commissioned to document the process of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Two weeks after she arrived, war broke out, and Balsells chose to stay. From that moment until 2000, her career and her life were profoundly linked to the Balkans, where she covered successive military conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo for different media outlets, and also autonomously.
In 2002 she brought together the most powerful images from this war in a book called ‘Balkan in Memoriam’. And in 2004, almost as a kind of epilogue to an entire decade of personal involvement, she made the documentary ‘Retratos del alma’, in which her reencounter with some of the people featured in her photos of the conflict offers us a harrowing insight into the effects of the war. For this project and for her whole body of work in the Balkans she won the 2006 Ortega y Gasset Award for the Best Reporting.
Balsells has also carried out photographic projects in Mexico, Israel, Palestine, Romania, Cuba, Canada, Italy (Sicily), Haiti and Mozambique. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions and curated several shows, including ‘Latidos de un mundo convulso’ (Espai Cultural Caja Madrid, 2007) and ‘Desaparecidos’ (MUSAC, CCCB and La Casa Encendida, 2011), a retrospective of the work of the photojournalist Gervasio Sánchez.
In 2007 MACBA commissioned her to produce a photographic report on the education of the elites, as part of the group project Metropolitan Images of the New Barcelona. The result of this investigation was the series ‘Formación global. IESE’, 2007, which now forms part of the MACBA Collection.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of our interview with Eric Baudelaire.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Manolo Laugillo that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Jorge Ribalta that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Joan Fontcuberta that we were unable to include the first time around
Manolo Laguillo
Manolo Laguillo is a photographer, essayist and professor of photography in the Fine Arts Faculty, Universitat de Barcelona. His stark, deserted urban representations illustrate processes of change in the contemporary metropolis. In FONS AUDIO #37 Manolo Laguillo talks about his methods of working with large format cameras, about his walks in the city outskirts, about puddles, asphalt and ruins, about the qualities of colour and black and white, the sensuality of prints on paper, and the links between music and photography.
Xavier Ribas
The photographs of Xavier Ribas analyse processes of transformation of contemporary metropolises, and the ways of life and habitability that these changes bring about.
Eric Baudelaire
Born in Salt Lake City but based in Paris, Eric Baudelaire uses various formats to explore politically-charged historical events and documents. In FONS ÀUDIO #21 he discusses the background and context of the ideas and procedures behind 'The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 Years Without Images'.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with the Catalan photographer Sandra Balsells.
Eulàlia Grau
Part avant-garde artist and part activist, Eulàlia Grau is considered to be one of the most combative voices of a generation that fought for a profound change of values during the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the early years of the Transition. Using images taken from the media, the artist draws attention to the perversions and injustices of the capitalist system and its mechanisms of control, repression and persistence.
Jordana Mendelson
Jordana Mendelson talks about the condition of the document and the modern photographic utopia.