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Cristina de Middel
This is What Hatred Did
Cristina de Middel
Cristina de Middel. SODOMO
“This is what hatred did” is the lapidary phrase that ends Amos Tutuola’s novel My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
When it was published in 1954, the novel provoked such violent reactions that Tutuola was obliged to leave Nigeria. Its concluding phrase is the starting point for photographer Cristina de Middel’s interpretation of the tenebrous story based in the streets of Makoko, a watery slum in the city of Lagos.
The project merges Tutuola’s original story with the reality of a country suffering under the heavy burden of African stereotypes. De Middel plays with the double narrative offered by text and image, and the layers of meaning produced by their union. What emerges is a grey zone between documentary and fiction that seeks to cast light upon a complex and inscrutable continent.
Selected Works
Cristina de Middel
Iniwolinmo
1 ETH
Cristina de Middel
Olorun
1 ETH
Cristina de Middel
Isinku
1 ETH
Cristina de Middel
Oniyobwo
1 ETH
Cristina de Middel
Ajeniyan
1 ETH
Cristina de Middel
Ibimo
1 ETH
Full Collection
Artist
Cristina de Middel
1975 (Spain)
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Cristina de Middel is a Spanish artist based in Alicante, Spain.
She trained in photojournalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and later moved to Oklahoma to do a Master’s in Photography. In 2012, she self-published her first photography book Afronauts in which she recounts a Zambian space programme in South Africa.
She was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2013 and won the Infinity Award from the International Centre of Photography in the same year. In 2017, she received the Spanish National Photography Award for “re-designing the limits of the reality of photographic language.” That same year, she joined Magnum Photos, sponsored by the renowned photographer Martin Parr. In 2018, she was guest curator of the PhotoEspaña festival and organised six exhibitions that vindicate the playful. In 2022, she became the first Spanish woman to chair Magnum Photos.
Press + Articles
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01
Photographing Past Stereotype
The New York Times (article)
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02
Lagos entre terre et rêve
Le Monde (article)
