Albarrán Cabrera: Photographic Syntax

About

As darkroom alchemists, Albarrán Cabrera integrate various photographic techniques and inventive processes to expand their unique visual lexicon. The thirty-five works on view span the past decade, from early silver gelatin and platinum palladium prints to their now renowned glowing color landscapes made on Japanese gampi paper over gold leaf. Also included are their most recent works executed through the complex process of color carbon printing and new prismatic abstractions of polarized light. Rooted in art historical references and full of symbolic significance, the tactile materiality of their photographs continues to intrigue and inspire a sense of wonder for both the natural world and the intricacies of our conscious awareness. 

'The possibility of having a tool with which to investigate reality is what drew us to the photographic medium. At first we photographed with the simple intention of recording what we saw. But soon our interest shifted from capturing the superficial appearance of reality to investigating its “underlying structure”. Thus, photography has in this way become the perfect philosophical tool with which to understand the world and our images are the by-product of that investigation, the notebooks of our research."

Angel Albarrán (b.1969, Barcelona) and Anna Cabrera (b. 1969, Sevilla) have worked collaboratively as art photographers since 1996. Influenced by both occidental and oriental thinkers and artists, their photographs question our assumptions of time, place and identity to stimulate a new understanding of one’s own experience and perception. Their photographs have been exhibited across Europe, the United States and Japan and are held in the private collections of Hermès, the Goetz Collection, Banco de Santander, The German Bundestag, and De Nederlandsche Bank among others. The artists are based in Barcelona, Spain.