CRISTINA GARCÍA RODERO

“Mouths open wide”

(Puertollano, Ciudad Real, 1949)

Mouths Open Wide is the first thematic retrospective by Cristina García Rodero. The exhibit ranges from the first photographic works of the late 1970s to the present day. The exhibition is made up of more than sixty images from the more than thirty thousand that have been reviewed for this exhibit. Most of the selected photographs are unpublished, recovered from a project that the photographer kept in a drawer for forty years to now leave us “with our mouths wide open,” just like the stars of her works. García Rodero takes such an extensive number of photos in her reports that, sooner or later, her negatives depict characters yawning, screaming, amazed, laughing out loud or transformed by their grimaces of pain. This common thread invites us on a journey across a forty-year career, from the sites closest to her native Puertollano to the most remote corners of the globe, passing through current events such as the Burning Man Festival in Nevada and the Love Parade in Germany, from the most rural ethnographic depictions to the most avant-garde images. García Rodero does all of this without losing a single iota of genius in her way of telling us what is happening in the world, which has made her the first Spanish photographer to be part of the prestigious Magnum Photos Agency. The exhibit begins with an image of the birth of a child who, when exhaling his first breath, gives us the beginning of everything; from there we will navigate the deepest human feelings, masterfully captured for the depth and truth that Cristina García Rodero imposes on her work, finishing the photographic journey with the last breath at a wake in Georgia.

Juan Carlos Moya Zafra

The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Fuenlabrada City Council and the CEART (Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente) in Madrid.
Curators: Juan Carlos Moya Zafra and Cristina García Rodero
Technical assistance and digitization: Alicia Barrera and Ana Muñoz
Laboratory: Juan Manuel Castro Prieto and David Vicente
Framing: Estampa Marcos