CRISTINA GARCÍA RODERO
In Those who have seen death. Procession of the Holy Christ of the Agony, belonging to her work in Spain Hidden, Cristina García Rodero, shows a group of women from a village in Galicia (Xende). Captured from a tour of villages around different regions of Spain between 1975 and 1988, it is part of Spain Hidden series, a work that has provided her international fame. The image has a great documentary value, anthropological and artistic both for its quality and the visual record, so especially personal. It represents the tradition held on the Sunday of the Holy Trinity when, those who wish to acknowledge a favour or requests a health improvement, make the trip around the temple with a coffin, -style procession of shrouds of Santa Marta de Ribarteme in Pobra do Caramiñal, or in As Neves. The photographer takes a highly original approach to human beings in a time when the "deep Spain" begins to disappear, the Spain of the villages that the artist has travelled, living them and impregnating herself with a basis of constant work.
Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Complutense University in Madrid, she combined her work as a teacher at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Complutense University in Madrid and her work as a photographer until 2007, when she is devoted exclusively to this art. Always interested in rites and customs she has recorded hundreds of national traditions with her camera, often unknown or in the process of disappearing, for her series "Spain hidden", which became internationally famous. But her restless and traveller spirit has led her to travel to countries around the world (Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Georgia, Albania ...) looking for other traditions, other views and other feelings. She uses her camera to document folklore, religious or pagan rituals, concerts, wars ... but without pursuing the exotic or the morbid. She shows us the human soul and succeeds with special elegance and mastery in the faces of women and children.
She received the National Award for Photography in 1996, being the first Spanish woman who was part of the Magnum Agency, was awarded the Alcobendas International Photography Award in 2011 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 2013.
