Miquel Juliá - Can Monroig

Photography and lies

There was no interest in photography in my family beyond the desire to have a scrapbook, so I find it difficult to remember the reason that, from a very young age, led me to want to have a camera in my hands and capture small moments and fragments of the world around me. I can only assume that perhaps my grandfather's passion for painting, especially for landscapes, for which he almost always used a photograph for his paintings, and my father's great love for cinema, had an influence.

The family camera was a Kodak Instamatic and with that camera I began to see the world through a viewfinder and, without even being aware of it, to frame.

Framing is the first big lie, because the camera, even if it imposes its limits, does not lie, but the photographer does. The photographer decides what he wants to see, how he is going to see it, and how to disguise or hide everything that he does not like or simply does not want us to see.

Photography is the only artistic discipline that needs a real model to create an image. You can't make a photograph out of nothing. We don't have a blank canvas or material to shape, so in some way we manipulate, recreate, transform and lie.

I have always been interested in photography and my training was self-taught until I was 26, when I was able to study at the CAV (Centre d'Arts Visuals).
After finishing my studies, I joined the teaching staff of the CAV until its dissolution, but I continued teaching for a few years in public centres and private institutions, combining teaching with laboratory work, staying as far away as possible from the photography of social events.

The emergence of digital photography meant a radical change for me which, together with a series of personal circumstances, caused a halt in my photographic activity.

I no longer understood photography or its processes and I abandoned any attempt to continue with professional work until in 2017 I decided to pick up a camera again and learn the resources of digital imaging but leaving aside any pretensions other than my own enjoyment.

I currently use medium format digital and analog cameras and I am getting into large format.
I will soon present at Can Monroig a series of performance photographs made around the proposal of Marie-Noëlle Ginard "Shelter", a textile installation in the middle of nature, around which a performance was held in April 2022 and in which Photographers also participated Gabriel Ramon and Robert Lopez Hinton.