The Paris VU gallery is putting up a magnificent exhibition, dedicated to the life-long work of photographer Juan Manuel Castro Prieto.
By altering black and white, and colours, as well as focused and blurred, the Spanish photographer Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, has managed to capture nature deep inside Ethiopia. His photographs, show-cased at the VU gallery in Paris, give room for intense contemplative meditation.
His works are not only made for viewing. They peacefully ensnare onlookers and upon entry, whether it is to sit down on a bed next to a prostitute, to share a Pepsi Cola in a young man’s home or to participate in animal hide tanning in the middle of the street.
Besides this bewitching exoticism, Prieto dives into the “banal and humble” everyday-life, of which he so delicately knows how to express with sensuality and spirituality.
By exploring all kinds of genres, nudes, landscape, still-life, and portrait, Prieto creates an imaginary mosaic, a patchwork that unites an entire country without prejudice.
While remaining inextricably linked, several dichotomies may be discerned, mixing past and present, urban and rural life, religion and belief.
If an integral part of the exhibition is tinted with a dreamy melancholy, it is because Prieto often returns to Ethiopia, a country close to his heart, just like his country of origin (Peru), to contemplate on times past and in the ray of present and real memories.
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