KINDERWUNSCH
ANA CASAS BRODA

02/06/2015 - 31/08/2015

PHOTOESPAÑA 2015

Picasso Room

Fine Arts Circle

Madrid, Spain

"... Kinderwunsch, children and desire. The desire to have children. The intensity of affection, passion, depression. Desire as a journey inwards and outwards at the same time. A vital process.

Memory, recollection, the present, the past and the future are analogous to photography and play a vital role in Ana Casas's work. Ana has great insight into the power of the medium, and uses it as a tool to trigger memories and to consolidate them in the future. She understands that time is closely related to memory and that in this fact lies the true power of the medium. The tide that comes and goes between the two, and the precarious instant in the present, are vital elements in understanding Kinderwunsch's texts and nuances.

This project is a delicate balancing act between different times, none more important than the other. In an attempt to create a balance between them, Ana generates work to make the journey as vital as it needs to be. And she needs to drag it into the present. She takes photographs to make her memories and the present real. The photographs here are a cathartic tool, softening her journey into motherhood and soothing her childhood. They form part of the photographic jigsaw that helps Ana reconcile her memories with her desires. Desires that correspond to both the girl and the woman.

Kinderwunsch can only coexist with words and photographs together. Both languages support each other; words fill in the blanks, when there are no photographs; photographs, in turn, expand the words. Their words are urgent, they give impulse and order to the photographs. They sew the past, present, memories, desire and love together.

Kinderwunsch may be very specific to Ana and her life, but it transcends the personal to be universal. Like the best photography, this project not only allows her to contemplate who she is and why, but also offers us a space to reflect and weave together our personal experiences, memories, fantasies and narratives".

Susan Bright (excerpt from the text Mnemosyne on Kinderwunsch)

Kinderwunsch is a book where text and photos construct a narrative that explores the complexity of the experience of motherhood. Its backbone is this constantly changing weave of the relationships between my children and myself in the process of becoming a mother and the construction of their identity. As in my previous works, the body and the home are central to the project.

Kinderwunsch has been running for seven years and has become an increasingly complex project. We built scenarios in which actions take place. Sometimes they were my children's ideas, sometimes images that came from my fantasies. The picture depends on the action and is always a discovery.

I am interested in working with experiences from the frontier between the everyday and the actions that are performed for the camera. Photography as a vital form of intervention in reality, the tension between recreated action and spontaneity as a space that reveals essential aspects of relationships. Photography as a search for appearances of a reality that is not always visible. I am fascinated by the threshold between reality and its image in which photography moves, that enigmatic space that eludes interpretation, singular for each spectator.

ABOUT ANA CASAS BRODA

(SPAIN | MEXICO 1965), has lived in Mexico since 1974. He studied Visual Arts, History and Photography in Mexico, Spain, Austria and the United States. Since 1983 he has had numerous solo exhibitions in Mexico and abroad. Member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores FONCA 2008-2011. Published two photobooks: Álbum, published by Mestizo, Spain, 2000; and Kinderwunsch, published by La Fábrica, 2013, winner of the Best Art Book Award by the Spanish Ministry of Art, Culture and Sport in 2014. Álbum was presented as a solo exhibition at Centro de la Imagen, Mexico, in 2001-2002, at Casa de América, PHotoEspaña festival 2002, and at several other international venues. Kinderwunsch opened at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, PHotoEspaña festival 2015, and was later presented at FOTOHOF, Salzbugo, Austria, 2016, at the Museo Regional de Querétaro, Mexico, 2017 and at the Museo de la Ciudad de México, 2019. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and publications, including HOMETRUTHS, book and exhibition curated by Susan Bright, presented at Photographers Gallery, London, UK, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 2015, Belfast Exposed, festival in Ireland, 2015.Since 1990 she has been organising activities on photography, educational programmes, meetings, festivals, etc. He was assistant to Manuel Álvarez Bravo in 1986.

She has worked at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid - from 1989 to 1993 -, in 1994 she founded the Education area of Centro de la Imagen, where she worked until 1998, from 2000 to 2006 she was coordinator of program FotoGuanajuato, program of studies and festival organised by the Instituto de Cultura de Guanajuato and Centro de la Imagen, from 2007 to 2015 she coordinates the Seminario de Fotografía Contemporánea of Centro de la Imagen with the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín. In 2012 she founded Hydra + Fotografía with Gabriela González Reyes and Gerardo Montiel Klint- As co-curator with Gisela Volá she created "Borrador de un cuerpo intervenido" Arte x Arte, Buenos Aires Argentina, 2017, Hydra x FOAM, Netherlands 2017, among many others. She is co-organiser of the Photobook Fair and the Latin American Photobook Award 2017 at the FotoMuseo Cuatro Caminos in the framework of the Latin American Photography Colloquium. He is a juror for various competitions and grants such as Sistema Nacional de Creadores y Jóvenes Creadores, FONCA, 6x6 Global Talent World Press Photo, Photo Vogue, among many others. In 2016 he created INCUBADORA DE FOTOLIBROS, a program where authors develop their photobooks with the advice of national and foreign editors and designers. In 2018 he founded INFRAMUNDO, a publishing project of Hydra, with José Luis Lugo and Ramon Pez, which in 2018 published 24 photobooks and were presented at international fairs.