Seeing is believing: Barcelona World Press Photo

For the 8th consecutive year, the Photographic Social Vision Foundation is organising the itinerant “World Press Photo” exhibition, which received more than 35,000 visitors last year. In this edition 5.691 photographers of 125 different nationalities participated in the award’s ten categories.

The CCCB presents the 170 winning photographs at this edition of the prestigious international photojournalism award, under the logo “Seeing is believing“.

The aim is to show the role of documentary photography in current affairs, as a finger on the pulse of world society.

The year’s winning photograph comes from the South African Jodi Bieber, who immortalised Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan girl mutilated as punishment for running away from the house of her husband after suffering violence at the hands of her in-laws.

The Taliban went in search of her in revenge for the humiliation received and cut off her ears and nose. She was subsequently rescued and taken to a shelter run by the organisation Women for Afghan Women, which brought her over to the United States for medical treatment and facial reconstructive surgery.

Three Spanish photographs also received awards: Gustavo Cuevas, who won the second prize in the Sports category for his snapshot of the gored matador Julio Aparicio; Fernando Moleres, who received second prize in the Daily Life category for his photograph of child prisoners in Sierra Leone, and Guillem Valle, who won the third prize in the Portraits category, for his picture of a man from the Dinka tribe in southern Sudan, a group of farmer and cattle-raising nomads.

Desbordamiento de Val de Omar exhibition at La Virreina

The moving picture as an educational tool. Far removed from big screen superproductions devoid of content, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge is rethinking cinema through the lens of popular education in six projects that are set to be exhibited between July and October.

These four “in-house” productions include one organised in conjunction with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and a project on the Cinématheque de Tànger. Using photography and experimental cinema they look at various types of culture that make up civil society.

The Pedagogical Missions of the Republic, which the photographs of José Val del Omar record in the exhibition Desbordamiento de Val de Omar (Val de Omar Overflow) are shown as the first initiative to favour cultural exchange during the time of the Second Republic.

La Virreina is showing one of his main film creations, Tríptic Elemental d’Espanya (Elemental Triptych of Spain), three shorts that merge the reality of Granada, Castile and Galicia with the artist’s poetic imagery.

Works like this, which are more hypnotic than narrative, reflect the technical evolution of this unknown artist, who went from recording missions to experimenting with new photographic and cinematographic equipment.

Palau de la Virreina -> La Rambla 99
www.virreina.bcn.cat

Secret Guide to the Rambla at Palau Virreina

The project entitled Secret Guide to the Rambla (Guia Secreta de la Rambla) invites people to examine its photographic, artistic and other visual representations of the area. The Rambla is most certainly one of Barcelona’s most iconic and universal spaces, for that reason we recommend to discover one of the Rambla’s jewel, the Hotel 1898 in Las Ramblas!

The exhibition, entitled Instantànies de carrer (Street Snapshots), displays a century’s worth of history in the form of 267 photographs of various kinds, from street photos taken at the start of the 20th century to critical photocreations with the current “postcardisation” of the Rambla. The Ocaña 1973-1983 exhibition focuses on the role of this artist, Ocaña, a pioneer of the gay movement and an entire period, within the underground and alternative cultural movements during the 1970s and until he died 1983.

To this end, “Secret Guide to La Rambla” places photographs by Frederic Ballell, Gabriel Casas, Josep Maria Sagarra, Brassaï, Dora Maar, Ramon Masats, Colita, Xavier Miserachs, Josep Cunties and Manel Armengol alongside images by Eva Serats, Red Caballo, Àngels Margarit, OriolVilanova, Peter Downsbrough, Jaume Pitarch, Beat Streuli and Frank Berger, amongst many others.
 
Secret Guide to La Rambla – > From 25 March to 24 May 2010 – Free admission
Palau de la Virreina – La Virreina Lab 
Address: la Rambla, 99 – Ciutat Vella | tuesday-sunday: 12-20 h – mondays closed, except holidays