Cristina Garcia Rodero Three Flames PHotoEspaña 2008 & Miserere by Marrie Bot Photography

Cristina Garcia Rodero, Three Flames, 2005. © Cristina Garcia Rodero/Magnum Photos.

MADRID.- The Regional Government of Madrid presents at PHotoEspaña the latest work by the winner of the 6th Photography Award. The exhibition shows over 100 photographs, the majority unpublished, based on the cult of the mythical Venezuelan character.

Cristina García Rodero is a major exponent of the documentary trend that began in Spain during the nineteen seventies. For three decades, she has studied and photographed popular traditions, mainly in Spain but also in Mediterranean Europe and Latin America. Her images are characterised by an extraordinary strength, the result of her passion for life and her photographic oeuvre stands out both for its meticulous technique and for the curiosity and sensitivity it shows for the territories explored.

María Lionza. La diosa de los ojos de agua contains approximately one hundred works revolving around this mythical Venezuelan character, whose cult goes back to the time before the Spaniards arrived in the fi fteenth century. Since then, there have been numerous pilgrimages to the Sorte mountain, located in the state of Yaracuy, where the devout go to make their requests. Cristina García Rodero’s photographs have never been published and they cover her work over the last ten years. They are a valuable selection of images on the rites, ceremonies and customs of María Lionza’s worshippers and offi ciants in today’s Venezuela.

Cristina García Rodero (Puertollano, Ciudad Real, 1949) has received numerous awards, including the World Press Photo Prize in the art category (1993) and Spain’s National Photography Prize (1996). She has participated in many solo exhibitions in the United States, Mexico, Portugal, United Kingdom, Germany, Venezuela and Poland, as well as in the Venice Biennale (2001).

Quote:"I tried to photograph the mysterious, true and magical soul of popular Spain in all its passion, love, humor, tenderness, rage, pain, in all its truth; and the fullest and most intense moments in the lives of these characters as simple as they are irresistible, with all their inner strength, as a personal challenge that gave me strength and understanding and in which I invested all my heart."

See also Miserere by Marrie Bot ... the great pilgrimages of penance in Europe : pictures of Fatima, Croagh Patrick, Zebrzydowski, Andujar, Lourdes, Paclawska, Sevilla, Tinos, Lough Derg and Rocio...