Albarrán Cabrera are the photographers Anna Cabrera (b. 1969, Sevilla) and Angel Albarrán (b. 1969, Barcelona) who work together as a collaborative duo based in Barcelona.
The question running like a thread throughout their work is how images trigger individual memories in the viewer. Depending on their social and cultural backgrounds and on their personal experience, viewers will perceive images in completely different ways. Albarrán Cabrera find very interesting subjects such as time, reality, existence, identity and empathy, but what they find the most fascinating is the relation between them. These relations are difficult to explain by means of words and that is why they rely on images.
Albarrán Cabrera see their photographs as objects in their own right, focusing not only on the image itself, but also on its physical manifestation as printed copies. They personally handcraft their prints in their studio using a wide range of processes and materials either by inventing new techniques or by experimenting with established ones expanding their “photographic syntax”.
«We are particularly interested in memories. Our aim is to play with viewers’ memories and to construct a representation inside their minds. We never know what the final result will be, because individuals have their own exclusive memories and have grown up in different cultures and environments. Our images are the bare bones of this mental construction.
As Albarrán Cabrera have pointed out “this wide range of processes and materials serve a single purpose: to give us far more parameters to play with the viewer’s imagination than a mere image. The texture, colour, finishing, tones – even the border – of a print can provide the viewer with valuable information.”
The work of Albarrán Cabrera has been exhibited in Spain, Japan, Switzerland, USA, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Lebanon, and Italy. Private collections and institutions that house their photographs include Hermès, Goetz Collection, The German Bundestag's Art Collection, Banco de Santander and De Nederlandsche Bank among others. They have also produced photographic prints for institutions such as Fundació La Pedrera, Barcelona; Fundació Toni Catany, Mallorca; Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid; FotoColectania, Barcelona; the Photographic Archive, Barcelona. They have also collaborated with publishers such as Adelphi Edizioni, Mondadori Libri, Penguin Random House, Diogenes Verlag, RM Verlag and Ediciones Atalanta as well as institutions such as La Monnaie De Munt, -Belgium's federal opera house-.
