Isabel Muñoz is a Spanish photographer who was awarded the National Photography Prize by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 2016. She has studied photography at the Foto Centro de Madrid as well as in the Untied States where she has acquired mastery in different techniques, in particular in early photographic processes of which she is an undisputed master. While her platinum prints on albumin paper are full of delicacy and nuance, she also works in colour.
Her subjects range from tango and flamenco dancers to the warrior tribes of Ethiopia, members of the Mara gangs in El Salvador, and followers of a religious sect in Iraq, but in all cases her interest is the embodiment of the human being, somewhere between appearance and sensuality, between intimacy and community. Isabel Muñoz knows how to highlight the human body, its shapes, its postures but also its codes, its signs and community rituals. She explores the universe of body in movement, whether in dance, wrestling, martial arts or bull-fighting. She also works with bodies that are staged, sublimated, painted, bejewelled, scarred, tattooed, the social body.
At times Isabel Muñoz concentrates on small details with the eye of an entomologist, bringing out balance, beauty and mystery. Her images are timeless, impossible to categorize. For Christian Caujolle , they are akin to classical painting or sculpture in that she affords so much attention to texture and to the dialogue between light and shadow. Her work is very much of the flesh while at the same time demonstrating sharp precision and a fine elegance. Her compositions are clean and perfect. They invite silent contemplation.
The Bièvres exhibition at the International Photo Fair is a retrospective, including extracts from some of her best-known series.
The exhibition will be held at the Grange aux Fraises, rue de Paris as well as at the Maison des Photographes et de l’Image, rue de la Terrasse.