The photographer, artist, researcher, editor and independent curator Jorge Ribalta received the National Photography Prize awarded by the Ministry of Culture. The jury chose him for “his vast artistic, curatorial and critical career” and particularly appreciated “his contribution to the review of documentary photography and its historiography based on artistic practice, research and thought, as well as establishing a reflection on the photographic fact of its political history, establishing the link of photography with labor movements, work culture and the class perspective.
Furthermore, the jury highlighted “his international projection since the start of his career and his recent projects which demonstrate his creative dimension, his curatorial rigor and his contribution to a kind of national and European counter-history which revises identity as an artifact cultural. » .
Jorge Ribalta (Barcelona, 1963) had his first exhibition in Barcelona at the end of the 1980s. He then made several trips to the United States and his work was part of the New Photography 10 exhibition, a selection of emerging works. artists organized by MoMA. His work is also part of the collection of the Reina Sofía Museum.
He has curated exhibitions such as Barcelona. The metropolis in the age of photography1860-2004 (La Virreina, Barcelona, 2016) or In Spain. Photography, orders, territories (ICO Museum, Madrid, 2021). Author of The public space of photography. Tests and interviews, Arcadia-La Virreina, Barcelona, 2018.
He also developed a career as a cultural manager, as director of the public programs department of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. [MACBA] between 1999 and 2009, and as a publisher of photography books. In addition, he regularly publishes articles in La Vanguardia, as well as in various media.
The prize, worth 30,000 euros, was awarded to photographer Laia Abril in 2023.
