El Proyector 2023 – Foto Colectania Foundation

At the end of May was held a new edition of El Proyector de la Fundación Foto Colectania where this year we have participated for the first time with our students of the Online Master’s Degree in New Documentary Photography. Foto Colectania Foundation is a non-profit organization that aims to disseminate photography and make it known in the social, artistic and educational field of our country.

It is a set of activities that aim to showcase the different initiatives that coexist in the panorama of photographic creation. In this edition, it was dedicated to the work of students who were selected by the Friend Schools of the Foto Colectania Foundation, of which LABASAD was part this year.

There are two phases , El Proyector y El Gran Proyector. In the first phase, the best project from each participating school was selected and then moved on to the next phase, El Gran Proyector.

The project selected by a LABASAD student to move on to the next phase was “Dor” by Ana Topoleanu, a documentary project where she portrays an intimate story about the vulnerability of her family going through difficult times, trying to figure out how to stay strong and united.

You can see our students’ projects in the full event. 👇

The second phase is El Gran Proyector, an event where each student selected by the jury of Foto Colectania in the first phase, presents their photographic project at the Estrella Damm Factory in Barcelona, together with other selected students.

The winner of El Gran Proyector receives an award from the Foto Colectania Foundation.

DOR – ANA TOPOLEANU

Dor is the winning project for the first phase of El Proyector. It is an intimate documentary about how the aging process is affecting the filmmaker’s parents and their relationship with them during this period. It treats it as a natural, expected process but at the same time it is painful, makes us vulnerable and more connected than ever. She documents it with digital and analog photographs, archive photos and texts written by her parents.

All LABASAD students participating in this year’s El Proyector:

APADRE – AGUSTÍN ARCE GARCÉS

aPadre is a self-portrait by Agustín Arce which is elaborated through a photographic series born from the introspective need to address the lack of paternal desire and instinct. He uses portraits of parents and children as a projective means to try to capture this internal conflict. He does not want to address the fear of being a father but the fear of being a good enough father for your children.

RESPAWN – ARNAU ELIAS VALETI

Respawn is a photographic series about how sometimes people want to become the protagonist of a story, as if they were the main character of a game, because it allows them to live another life following the rules of fiction such as shooting without killing or being shot without bleeding.

MAES. HILOS INVISIBLES – BLANCA PÉREZ DE TUDELA

Maes is an audiovisual project in which Blanca allows us to see her family home. Through photographs and recorded conversations between her grandmother, her mother and Blanca, they come to discover how these micro-discourses have ended up seeping into her feelings and emotions, even into her own identity.

In her project, we can observe that the domestic chores expected to be performed by the stereotypical family woman in fact hides many secrets. Sewing, or cooking are chores in which women have been dominated, controlled and contorted for many decades and which have acted as invisible threads molding their subconscious and state-of-being.

CONFORMADOS – CRISTINA SAIZ ABELLEIRA

Cristina’s project is about the millennial generation, specifically young people living in Pontevedra, a small city in Galicia.

Through their protagonists, each one of them explains, in a very close and personal way, how they feel and what they see for themselves in the future. With their messages, they are highlighting a part of society that is trying to live and adapt to a reality that involves assuming a great workload along with economic precariousness as well as everything else that harms them in their daily lives and their future.

PERRO PERDIDO – JAUME PARERA CASALS

Jaume’s project is from the perspective of a dog that is lost in a residential neighborhood in the urban periphery.

The doghouse is symbolized as a monument or family pantheon of those loved ones who have left. The architecture that appears in the images is represented as a form of emergency and resistance, as if the constructions were still standing despite having been forgotten.

HACER EL NIDO – MARGA FARGA CONSTENLA

Antonio and Ana, Marga’s parents, act as the protagonists for this project. It tells the story of an ordinary married couple who have been married for more than 40 years, but at the same time, due to life circumstances, they have been separated for another 40 years. When the time comes for them to retire, they have to learn to live together alone and this is something they do not know how to do, each of them entertains themselves in their daily lives as best they can and only spend time together at lunchtime.

The way they talk to each other, look at each other or even how they eat, highlights aspects of each other’s way of existing and personality. The audience is presented with a couple who do not know how to treat their daughters with affection but who are capable of giving all the love in the world to their dog, whom they treat like a grandchild.

YO DE MAYOR QUIERO SER – PASCUAL ROSALES RIVERO

YO DE MAYOR QUIERO SER is a photographic project which focuses on the life of Pascual’s little brother, who was introduced to the world of video games at a very early age, around 5 years old. He learned to play video games before he learned how to read.

For many years, he has been closer to an on-line life than to reality and in his family he has always been considered to be normal and also had the idea that it was better to be at home. However, everything changed when he suffered an accident at home, which made the whole family reflect on whether this accepted situation, which seemed so comfortable at first, had become a problem.

His brother had already been preferring to play video games for many years rather than experiencing life outside of the apparent safety of his house.

BARLOVENTO – SAINZA PARDAL PÉREZ

Barlovento presents the stages of mussel cultivation in the Rías Baixas through an intimate narrative of the characters with personal in-depth exploration. It displays a strong aesthetic whilst connecting with the emotional bond that is conceived between the sailors and the sea in their long journeys.

PERIMENOPAUSA – MERITXELL PERPIÑÁ MASIP

The Perimenopause project narrates the introspective journey about a process of change and the acceptance of the mature body.

Meritxell explains how she is not ready to face this new stage so she decides to document all the sensations and alterations that she feels during nine months such as hot flashes, insomnia and anxiety and how her body is preparing to face future needs. She passes from the fertile stage to the mature stage in which she finds a feeling of liberation and reconnection with our own body.

He makes use of the self-portrait by means of organic and landscape elements that he finds while walking, as they help her to soothe some of the natural effects and help to remind her that we age like the rest of living beings.

Would you like to develop works as incredible as the ones our students of the Online Master in New Documentary Photography have done?

Send us an email to [email protected] to get more information about our Spanish-language Online Master’s Program and our advisors will be happy to assist you.