Photojournalist, Cristina de Middel has been attracted by the eccentric lines of story-telling and avoids using well-known story-telling tropes. With her personal projects, she respects the basis of the truth but allows herself to break the rules of veracity, by trying to push the audience into analyzing the patterns of the stories we consume as real.
de Middel’s series, Afronauts is based on the documentation of an impossible dream that only lives in the pictures. I start from a real fact that took place 50 years ago and rebuild the documents adapting them to my personal imagery.
She has had a number of solo exhibitions, which include Party at Paris Photo Los à ngeles (2014: Los à ngeles, USA); Seven Stories at Dillon Gallery (2014: New York. USA); Vida y Milagros de Paula P at MUA Museum (2013: Alicante, Spain);
Her series, The Afronauts has been reconfigured and featured at a number of art institutions including La New Gallery (2014: London, UK), FOAM Museum (2013: Alicante, Spain), Parati em Foco (2013: Brazil), Lagos Photo Festival (2013: Lagos, Nigeria), Paraty Festival (2013: Brazil), Deutsche Börse HQ (2013: Frankfurt, German), Les Rencontres de la Photographie d ´Arles in the Section Officielle (2013: France), Festival Circulation (2013: Paris, France), Photo Ireland, The Cooper Gallery (2013: Paris, France) Photo Ireland, The Cooper Gallery (2013: Dublin, Ireland) and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse (2013: France). The work has also won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize at The Photographer’s Gallery (2013: London, UK).
Selected group show includes: Not All Documents Are Records at Open Eye Gallery (2014), Liverpool Biennal (2014: Liverpool, UK), Antipodes, P2P at the Photoespaña Festival (2014: Madrid, Spain); Fotolibros. Aquí y ahora at Fundació Fotocolectania (2014: Barcelona, Spain) and; New Spanish Photography Visions Beyond Borders at Juan Carlos I Of Spain Center (2014: New York City)
In 2014, de Middel won the award for the Best International Photobook at PHE PHotoespaña (Madrid, Spain). In 2013, she was awarded the PULSE Miami IMPULSE Prize (Miami, USA); the Infinity Award for a Publication, ICP (New York, USA) and she was a finalist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (London, England).
Cristina de Middel is featured in Zeitz MOCAA’s Afrofuturist exhibition, Still here tomorrow to high five you yesterday… (2019)