Marta Corada is a young photographer who documents the memory of places in a way that blurs the boundaries between storytelling and fact.
Marta’s images are composites, although so well crafted that it is at first hard to tell. Her approach involves placing her camera in one set position for the duration of a day, and taking numerous, almost innumerable, photographs. Everything is seen from the same point of view, so that every element happens within the exact same frame of reference. Once the day is over, the process of editing begins.
Against the constant backdrop of her chosen site, Marta removes some elements and leaves others, until the images begin to combine unrelated events in a way that it utterly truthful (it happened right there, in that very place, on that day) but also highly inventive and suggestive. Random associations spring up between passers by. Unexpected stories arise, fruit of some usually unnoticed aspect of a place that seems to affect so many of its visitors unawares. Doubt and confusion in Charing Cross; complete self-absorption at St Paul’s. Marta uses the documentary image as a kind of found object, in the creation of visual theatre that is both fact and fiction. Only the element of time is removed; the rest is as true as can be.
Marta Corada lives and works in London. Originally from La Rioja, Spain, she studied Fine Art & Photography at the Universities of Salamanca & Barcelona, and has had numerous international exhibitions, including Würth Museum, La Rioja; Galeria Spectrum Sotos, Zaragoza; Pantocrator Gallery. Shanghai; and Centro Cultural Pati Llimona, Barcelona. Her work will be exhibited at Somerset House at the same time as the exhibition, as part of the National Open Art Competition.
