This new project by Margarita V. Beltrán, shortlisted among the 100 best photographers from our Local open call ‘Latin America Panorama’, reshaped her family memories, validating the fundamental role that women have had throughout the years.
“One day I came across an old photo album that had belonged to my uncle David, who had been ordained a priest of the Vincentian order. In the album there was only one photograph where my grandmother appeared, it was a photo with all her siblings, my great-grandfather and my uncle David in the center, recently ordained priest. My grandmother Carmen was standing in the left corner of the frame and cropped in half because the photographer had taken her out of the frame. I decided then, to be the photographer of my family and create a new family album, a counter-album, where women are at the center of the visual representation, deciding who we are and how we build our relationship with the spiritual and religious world, as opposed to the gaze of a Latin American patriarchal culture.”
Margarita V. Beltrán is a Colombian artist and photographer based in Bogotá. Her work explores issues of gender, race and political violence in the context of Colombia and Germany. With her long-term project "Arder la casa", which explores the layers of violence in Colombia through her family s history, she has been invited to develop a book by the publishing house Hydra in Mexico. During her stay in Germany, she developed "Reclaiming Spaces", a photographic project on structural racist violence in eastern Germany. Margarita has taught photography at the Bauhaus University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She participated in the 43rd International Artists Salon with her project "Bailata Queer". In 2017, she was selected to attend the New York Times Portfolio Review. Margarita has exhibited at Photoville New York, PH Museum in Bologna, The Michael Horbach Stifftung in Cologne, and her work has been published in Lenscratch, Der Greif, Vice, among others. Margarita is a member of Diversify Photo and Native Agency.
