Pere Ibañez 1

Pere Ibañez

Barcelona native Pere Ibañez has earned international recognition for his emotionally-charged artwork. Pere Ibañez draws inspiration from the dramatic, suspenseful and unnerving styles of classic horror movies. These shocking images, however, seek to explore aspects of human nature that often go underplayed and trivialized. Instead, through photography and poetry, Pere Ibañez magnifies both the falls and ascensions of the human experience through his own lens.

 

Pere Ibañez’s works have been embraced around the world. His first photographic collection, EneME, has been released in 22 countries to date. The Leftlovers and Generation Y, his second and third series, both ranked #1 in iTunes sales for art ebooks in Spain, and its last exhibition in Beijing was ranked among the top five in the city. His work has also been featured in exhibitions and publications across the US, Asia and Europe, and a photo from his newest collection has been selected ahead of the full release for the Best of Photography Journal 2015 in the US.

 

In February 2010, just two months after releasing his first 3 photographs, Pere Ibañez received his first award in New York and eventually topped the sales charts. Two years later, he was featured in exhibitions across the US, Asia and Europe. Since working with NGO Peace for Humanity in 2011 to raise funds for victims of domestic violence, Pere Ibañez began to focus on some of the world’s more polarizing and political issues for his next project. He currently lives in Beijing, China, where he takes most of his photographs.

His latest release, Generation Y, was partly inspired by various crises in Spain and other areas of the world. The photos of the series reflect how today’s generations are suffering from racism, homophobia, gun violence, xenophobia, fascism, and the aggressive use of religion to justify hate. Often depicting how people simply endure while hoping for a better future, Pere Ibañez’s message is for people to instead fight their oppression, demand their rights, and have their voices heard.

 

Having explored themes of domestic violence, institutional oppression, societal pressure on the individual, racism and homophobia among other social issues, Ibañez’s latest publication, I.See.Dark, examines the fear of death and the unknown. Drawing on personal trauma and periods of grave illness, Ibañez offers this collection as a study in powerlessness, the instinctive need to survive and the challenging question of whose hands a person’s fate lies in.

 

If you want to discover more about his universe and his last book, read the interview with  Pere Ibañez