Madrid: Trama editorial / Museo Universidad de Navarra, 2015
Condition: Like New, faint bumped corner otherwise new condition, Signed, 22.5x15cm, 102pages, Softcover, English/Spanish
Cristina de Middel (Alicante, 1975) is a documentary photographer who has worked for years as a photojournalist. Disenchanted with the profession and the shaping of public opinion by the media, she went on to develop more personal projects such as Los Afronautas, a photographic series she produced in 2013, which became a phenomenon as a photographic publication. In it, she criticises the stigmatisation of Africa by the Western media. It won the Infinity Award from the International Centre of Photography as the best publication of that year.
The author was invited by the Archive of the Modern Conflict (AMC) to develop a work related to this photographic archive, which brings together images that have never been published or shown, almost on the "outskirts" of photography. The project for the AMC completes the story of a crew that in 1911, just before the First World War, brought together British and German scientists of various specialities in the common goal of reaching the island of Jan Mayen, located between Greenland and Iceland. But they never made landfall. The story of a failure aroused the interest of this artist.
This project turns the nonsense of a frustrated sailing story into satire, and addresses issues of imperfection and failure. De Middel's photography lacks rules and presents fictional scenes through a lens based on the reality of her photographs.
