From 20 September 2024 to 25 May 2025, the Toni Catany International Centre of Photography will be hosting Jordi Esteva‘s exhibition ‘Journey to a Forgotten World’, curated by Laura Terré.
Conceived as an anthological exhibition, it explores the different themes and environments that Jordi Esteva has photographed, from Bangladesh to Colombia through Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and the Ivory Coast. The exhibition records the talent of this vocational traveller who expresses himself through images and writing.
The nearly one hundred photographs and four audiovisuals that make up the exhibition function as a counterpoint to the books of memoirs that Esteva has published in recent years: El impulso nómada [The Nomadic Impulse] and Viaje a un mundo olvidado [Journey to a Forgotten World] (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2021-2023).
The photographs of Jordi Esteva (Barcelona, 1951) are photographs of today, but of another place. They question the supremacy of Western culture and shift the axis towards other parts of the planet that we see as worlds of legend, but which for their author are places where he has lived, and that is how he has photographed them.
Opting for the contemplation of that slow and ancient world, on the verge of disappearing, was the impulse of a dense, profound and singular work, without an equal, without a tribe, in the panorama of Spanish photography. Jordi Esteva’s work is free because it only obeys principles as mandates of destiny, far removed from the concept of triumph, the applause of critics or the presence in festivals and galleries.
These images bring back with even greater force the precious moments that have made Jordi Esteva who he is today. Photography, unlike literature, offers us a perceptive point of view to penetrate the scenes without a guide. Let us do so, let us enter, as the author did, into the realms of reverie.
Laura Terré, curator of the exhibition
Jordi Esteva (Barcelona 1951), is a writer and photographer passionate about Eastern and African cultures, to which he devotes most of his journalistic and photographic work. He has lived for five years in Egypt, working for Radio Cairo International. During those years he documented daily life in the desert in the book Els oasis d’Egipte (The Oasis of Egypt) published in 1995.
He was editor-in-chief and art director of the magazine Ajoblanco between 1987 and the summer of 1993. Since then, his work has been prolific, with four films and nine books published, the latest of which are the two volumes of memoirs of which this exhibition is a reflection.
