Gomma Photography Grant 2023
CABANYAL
Photographer
Laura Silleras
CABANYAL
22 Feb, 2024
For ten years, I’ve walked the streets of my neighborhood el Cabanyal, building a photographic essay that attempts to transcend the visual and offer us a new way of approaching the reality of a neighborhood that is at the center of public debate as a result of urban, political and social tensions. The photo essay proposes a journey through the Cabanyal in which the idea of time plays a fundamental role.
About the photographer
Laura Silleras
Laura Silleras (Valencia, Spain, 1979) started with photography as an autodidact. While studying Audiovisual Communication at the University of Valencia, she combined her independent photographic projects with her course studies, focusing on portraits and photographs of her community. In 2007 she went to Berlin and then to Mexico, with the aim of developing her photographic eye and full-scale documentary projects. In 2011 she moved to New York and worked as at the International Center of Photography (ICP). She he returned to her native Valencia to work on a long-term documentary project about the Cabanyal neighborhood, where she lived during her childhood. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Ojos Rojos, El Replicante, Fotografía Magazine, Vice Magazine Photo Issue, Ojo de Pez. In 2016 she was awarded the Roberto Villagraz scholarship at EFTI, Madrid, to pursue a master’s degree in Contemporary Photography. In 2018 he was awarded the Fragments scholarship, through which she had an exhibition at the MuVIM museum in Valencia in March 2019. She is currently working on her next documentary projects: Traca, a photographic essay on the Valencian fallas and Be-in-G, a documentary project about and in collaboration with the community Trans Community in Lisbon, Portugal.
