Paola De Grenet
Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Born in Milan, Italy, in 1971. Paola began her photographic career in London after concluding her studies in Graphic Design at the Camberwell College of Arts. She has collaborated with The Guardian, The Sunday Times Magazine and Penguin Publishers. In 2003 she moved to Barcelona, where she still lives, and started her personal project around the life of transsexuals in Spain. She was a finalist in Descubrimientos PhotoSpain with her series The waiting room. She has exhibited at the CaixaForum, PhotoMiami, Berlineliste and Art Madrid, among others. Won the FotoPress’07 scholarship and received the Marco Pasaresi award in 2009.
The images selected come from two different projects on childhood, Pink Dreams and Growing up. They are linked by Paolaʼs intimate approach as she observes children, registering the blurred boundary between innocence and experience, childhood and maturity, fantasy and reality. Paola seeks to find the potential adult that lurks in every child, analysing with her images both the dreams and the conflicts that mark this time of life.
growing up
Paola De Grenet
There is a lot of anxiety nowadays concerning children. As adults we perceive the world as a threatening place and as a consequence we tend to overprotect our children.
In the past (seventeenth century) we created the concept of childhood and great things were achieved to protect children from child labor, sexual abuse, neglect and violence.
In the 1950s we created the myth of the innocent child where childhood was the perfect place to indulge our nostalgia.
By the end of the seventies this romantic idea of childhood already began to erode.
The intent of this project is to follow not only the physical but also the psychological changes in a child through the years from the age of two up to adolescence and to observe the confused boundary between innocence and experience, childhood and adulthood.
Pink Dreams
Paola De Grenet
Often, when we sense we are moving away from the essential things in life, we feel the need to look back at childhood, a time when we were open to everything and in close contact with our natural self.
We constantly receive deceiving images of what would make us happy and we analyze our life through them.
I titled this project “Pink Dreams” because pink was my favourite colour as a child. A colour I rejected for many years and to which I now return with pride to convert it into my “magadalena de Proust”.
At touching distance
Paola De Grenet
After a long period of demanding commercial assignments, pushed by the need to feel excited again about taking pictures, I started focusing my attention on those closest to me. In this particular selection I portray my 2 children.
I use film and medium format camera for my personal projects because it allows me to slow down and find the kind of concentration I thrive off. During those instants before taking the picture my mind can only be there with the subject, present.
The silence or stillness I achieve before shooting, allows me to observe my children with the necessary detachment;only removed from the noise of the daily routine i can apréciate their beauty in all its complexity.
