Gabriel Barcelo honors the cultures of the Bolivian highlands
This photographic exhibit highlights the dignity and pride of quechuas, aimaras, and uru-chipayas, showing the demeanor, attire, and customs of the settlers of the Bolivian highlands, and also emphasizes the country's cultural diversity.
Spanish photographer Gabriel Barcelo will inaugurate Rostros Andinos(Andean Faces) in Artespacio CAF, the art gallery of the Development Bank of Latin America in La Paz. The exhibit starts on May 8th, and the photographs reflect the diversity, strength, and presence of the Bolivian highland cultures.
Barcelo, who has been living in Bolivia for six years, will exhibit 30 black and white photographs, product of a project he developed with the main purpose of showing the cultural and social wealth of the country.
The artist states, "I understand photography as a language that is capable of transcending image; therefore, after over three years of permanently travelling throughout the Bolivian highland, I was able to capture the faces and glances of the aimara, quechua, and uru-chipaya people, in which you can identify the universal characteristic that consolidates humanity".
The journey allowed me to get to know their customs, he adds, "and take an inner-journey, a voyage understood as the search for oneself. These images show the dignity of these communities and that of their valuable people".
The characteristic of the portraits in the foreground and background is the "complicity" that exists between the photographer and the object of the photography. This complicity can be transmitted to the spectator through the looks that are reflected in the photographs.
Barcelo stated, "It was important for me to show the work carried out prior to taking a picture. That is why, during the exhibit, a video will be shown that shows this work and which will allow the spectator to see the complicity relationship with the person being photographed; but what is most interesting to me is that when the audience sees that connection, they can feel it, and better understand the images".
Gabriel Barcelo was born in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in 1981. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, graduating with honors. He received the third National Award for Academic Merit during his studies in Fine Arts granted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and acknowledgement as a new artist in photography in the country. His photographs have been exhibited in Brazil, Colombia, Spain and France. In Bolivia, his works have only been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum, and the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (MUSEF, for its Spanish acronym) in La Paz.
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