HÉCTOR MEDIAVILLA (1970)
Héctor Mediavilla is a visual storyteller living in Barcelona. The central axis of his work addresses issues related to the construction of identity in unique human groups and their relationship with the environment. This documentary photographer, in recent years, devotes much of his time to projects with moving images and participatory photography projects.
He has a degree in Business Administration from Esade (Barcelona) and an MBA. Later he studied a postgraduate degree in Cultural Management in the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). He is currently finishing a postgraduate degree in Photography of Creation and Reflection in IEFC (Barcelona).
In 2002, he began to dedicate himself fully to photography . Since then he has produced most of his photographic essays in Africa, Europe and Latin America. At the beginning, he wanted to denounce injustices, over time his interest derived towards the understanding of the human condition. Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we do what we do?. His photo essays have been published in international media such as Colors , Geo, New York Times, XXI, Time, Newsweek, L'Internazionale , Photo, Esquire , La Vanguardia and many others.
His photographs have been awarded in competitions such as Picture of the Year International (POYI), Hansel Mieth award , Center Project Competition , London Festival of Photography , International Photography Awards (IPA), Fotopres , Talentos Photo España and CoNCA among others.
His pictures have been exhibited in places like the Vitra Museum , High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Guggenheim Bilbao, Paris Photo 2013, Dapper Museum in Paris, Der Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, the French Institute of Kinshasa (RDC) and Brazzaville (Republic of Congo), the Cultural Center of Spain (Mexico, Honduras, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Dominican Republic), Casa America Catalunya and the Museu Marítim de Barcelona.
He has been a member of the PictureTank Photographic Cooperative Agency (Paris) from 2004 to 2017.
Since 2005 he has conducted photographic workshops in different places such as Brazzaville within the framework of the Support Program for the Plastic Arts of the European Union with young Congolese photographers or the three consecutive workshops held in November 2017 aimed to 35 young African photographers in the framework of the program Acerca of the AECID and the Spanish embassies in Senegal, Niger and Mali.
In 2007, he founded with other three photographers (Sergi Cámara, Alfonso Moral and Fernando Moleres), the collective of documentary photography Pandora (www.pandorafoto.com).
In 2013, the Parisian publisher Intervalles launched SAPE, the first monograph of Mediavilla, which shows the photographs and testimonies collected in Brazzaville and Paris since 2003 with the Congolese sapeurs, for which it received the prestigious Grand Prix du livre du Mode 2014 of the University of Lumière Lyon, which awards him as the best book of the year published in France related to fashion.
In 2014, he directed the mini documentary "Sapeurs. The menu inside the suits ", made for Guinness beer , which won, among others, a Silver Cannes Lions award, a Silver British Arrow award and a Grand Clio and a Gold award in NY.
That same year he held his first participatory photography workshop with a group of women at risk of social exclusion in Martorell (Barcelona). During 2015 he developed the project " Puc Fer un Milió de Coses " (I can do a million things) with a group of adults with borderline intelligence (IL). During 6 months in 2017, Héctor developed " Refugees Dreams " participatory photography project with 11 young asylum seekers and refugees from 4 continents. All these projects have been supported by the Fundació La Caixa with its Art for Change program.