Spain

José
Guerrero

Biography

José Guerrero was born in Granada, Spain, in 1979. He studied technical architecture at the University of Granada where he obtained a degree in building engineering before obtaining a degree in photography at the Granada School of Art in 2004. He published his first photo book Efimeros (Ephemerals) in 2006. Since then, José Guerrero has been exhibiting regularly and has received numerous grants. 

He was nominated for the Prix Pictet in 2010 and in 2011, the Manuel Rivera Scholarship gave him the opportunity to work as an invited artist with photographer Mark Klett at the Arizona State University. José Guerrero lives and works in Madrid.

 

About the artworks

José Guerrero’s work revolves around themes such as remembering and forgetting; man’s footprint in space and time; the transformation of landscapes and how these landscapes are perceived through images. He focuses on nature and the city, the rural and the urban. The photographer always works in series as his images are to be interpreted individually but also as part of a whole. They are interlinked, as he says himself, “like the verse in a poem or the notes in a musical composition”. While being traditional key elements in landscape photography, light, colour, atmosphere and the horizon take on a particular relevance in Guerrero’s search for a universal vision. 

 

His photographs are neither spectacular nor fashionable. They are calm, strong, direct and authentic. Despite the fact that he works in colour, which could be seductive, his use of it is very sober, almost monochromatic. 

He focuses on atmospheres and tones, working on the edge of nothingness and in between times.

 

In his series La Mancha, the earth and the sky – the two elements composing this group of images – are both united and separated by the horizon line, revealing the geometrical structure of landscape, bordering on abstraction. His vision is devoid of romanticism as the remoteness and the emptiness deprive the images from any feeling or narrative, they become a metaphysical landscape.

The artworks

03
Collection of contemporary art