On Wednesday July 10, photographer Camilo Jose Vergara was awarded by the president of the United States, Barack Obama, along with 22 other professionals (playwrights, architects, filmmakers, historians, poets, etc.) by his brilliant work for four decades documenting with his camera urban and social changes in the poorest and most depressed areas of the United States.

“I am a builder of virtual cities. I think of my images as bricks that, when placed next to each other, reveal shapes and meanings of neglected urban communities.” 

Txt.- Camilo José Vergara

Resident in the United States for decades, his work has always been quiet and it has happened on this occasion with the prize (the National Humanities Medal) awarded by Barack Obama (it was barely referenced in traditional mass media). When I was teaching in Barcelona I introduced the work by this Chilean photographer on many occasions. I descovered his work through a museum exhibition in MACBA, Barcelona, a retrospective entitled "The New American Ghetto." And although in Madrid was not well known, in Alcalá I was discovered that Daniel Zarza is his friend and we invite twice.

Vergara does not disappoint in person, speaking slowly as if trying not to forget your native language, the Spanish, and he speaks about his amazing work with the ease of someone who has spent four decades convinced of the value of his work. He was the first to come to Detroit, others photographers following his steps and they arrived to the city searching the ruins of our contemporaneity, but none have devoted so much time and passion to the realization of their bright and remarkable photographs. Camilo Jose Vergara has a highly recommended website with an interesting selection of over 2,500 images, where you can read a statement of intent on his job.

Txt.- José Juan Barba

“For more than four decades I have devoted myself to photographing and documenting the poorest and most segregated communities in urban America. I feel that a people’s past, including their accomplishments, aspirations and failures, are reflected less in the faces of those who live in these neighborhoods than in the material, built environment in which they move and modify over time. Photography for me is a tool for continuously asking questions, for understanding the spirit of a place, and, as I have discovered over time, for loving and appreciating cities.

My focus is on established East Coast cities such as New York, Newark and Camden; rust belt cities of the Midwest such as Detroit and Chicago; and Los Angeles and Richmond, California. I have photographed urban America systematically, frequently returning to re-photograph these cities over time. Along the way I became a historically conscious documentarian, an archivist of decline, a photographer of walls, buildings, and city blocks. Bricks, signs, trees, and sidewalks have spoken to me the most truthfully and eloquently about urban reality.

I did not want to limit the scope of my documentation to places and scenes that captured my interest merely because they immediately resonated with my personality. In my struggle to make as complete and objective a portrait of American inner cities as I could, I developed a method to document entire neighborhoods and then return year after year to re-photograph the same places over time and from different heights, blanketing entire communities with images. Studying my growing archive, I discover fragments of stories and urban themes in need of definition and further exploration. Wishing to keep the documentation open, I include places such as empty lots, which as segments of a sequence become revealing. I observe photographic sequences to discover how places evolve, and to formulate questions. I write down observations, interview residents and scholars, and make comparisons with similar photographs I had taken in other cities. Photographs taken from different levels and angles, with perspective-corrected lenses, form a dense web of images, a visual record of these neighborhoods over time.”

Txt.- Camilo José Vergara

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Camilo José Vergara (nacido en 1944) es chileno, con sede en Nueva York, escritor, fotógrafo y documentalista. Nació en Santiago, Chile. Vergara comenzó como fotógrafo de  calle en Nueva York a principios de los años 70. Un trabajo que cambiará de manera significativa a mediados de la década de 1970, donde su trabajo en los estudios de postgrado en sociología en la Universidad de Columbia, le generan una mayor sensibilización y complejidad hacia las influencias ambientales en el comportamiento social.

A partir de su proyecto "The New Ghetto Americano", Vergara ha sido comparado con Jacob Riis por su documentación fotográfica de los barrios marginales de América y de los entornos urbanos en descomposición. A partir de la década de 1980, Vergara  aplica la técnica de refotografía a una serie de ciudades de Estados Unidos, fotografiando los mismos edificios y barrios desde el mismo punto de vista a intervalos regulares a lo largo de muchos años para capturar los cambios en el tiempo. Educado como sociólogo con especialidad en urbanismo, Vergara se centró en la documentación sistemática de un tiempo de extraordinario estrés urbano, y escogió lugares donde parecía que el estrés era más alto: los proyectos de vivienda de Chicago, el sur del Bronx de Nueva York, Camden, Nueva Jersey, Detroit y Michigan, entre otros.

Su trabajo fue tema de una exposición de 1999 en el National Building Museum, "El Nuevo Mundo: The Landscape of Latino Los Angeles" y posteriormente en el Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution. "The New American Ghetto", una exposición anterior, se inauguró en el National Building Museum y más tarde se presentó en la The Municipal Arts Society en la ciudad de Nueva York. Después de la publicación de su segunda obra importante, "American Ruins", el reconociiento hacia el trabajo de Vergara se consolido y ganó una MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" en 2002 y participó como miembro del Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) en la Universidad de Rutgers entre 2003/2004.

Expuesto por todo el mundo (en España en el MACBA en el año 2000), su trabajo ha sido publicado en siete libros. Su Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto, prevista su salida pra el próximo otoño de 2013 por la University of Chicago Press, utiliza fotografías realizadas durante décadas en esa comunidad icónica de Manhattan, y visualiza los efectos sociales y culturales de la gentrificación en lo que fue históricamente uno de los depósitos más ricos de la cultura afro-americana en el norte urbanizado.

En 2010, Vergara fue premiado con el Berlin Prize y pasó el semestre académico de la primavera de 2010 en la Universidad. El 10 de julio de 2013, Vergara recibió la Medalla Nacional de Humanidades / National Humanities Medal del presidente Barack Obama en una ceremonia celebrada en la Casa Blanca.

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José Juan Barba (1964) architect from ETSA Madrid in 1991. Special Mention in the National Finishing University Education Awards 1991. PhD in Architecture ETSAM, 2004. He founded his professional practice in Madrid in 1992 (www.josejuanbarba.com). He has been an architecture critic and editor-in-chief of METALOCUS magazine since 1999, and he advised different NGOs until 1997. He has been a lecturer (in Design, Theory and Criticism, and Urban planning) and guest lecturer at different national and international universities (Roma TRE, Polytechnic Milan, ETSA Madrid, ETSA Barcelona, UNAM Mexico, Univ. Iberoamericana Mexico, University of Thessaly Volos, FA de Montevideo, Washington, Medellin, IE School, U.Alicante, Univ. Europea Madrid, UCJC Madrid, ESARQ-U.I.C. Barcelona,...).

Maître de Conférences IUG-UPMF Grenoble 2013-14. Full assistant Professor, since 2003 up to now at the University of Alcalá School of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. And Jury in competitions as Quaderns editorial magazine (2011), Mies van der Rohe Awards, (2010-2024), Europan13 (2015). He has been invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione".

He has published several books, the last in 2016, "#positions" and in 2015 "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi " and collaborations on "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d'Eccezione", "La Mansana de la discordia" (2015), "Arquitectura Contemporánea de Japón: Nuevos territorios" (2015)...

Awards.-

- Award. RENOVATION OF SEGURA RIVER ENVIRONMENT, Murcia, Sapin, 2010.
- First Prize, RENOVATION GRAN VÍA, “Delirious Gran Vía”, Madrid, Spain, 2010.
- First Prize, “PANAYIOTI MIXELI Award”. SADAS-PEA, for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture Athens, 2005.
- First Prize, “SANTIAGO AMÓN Award," for the Spreading of Knowledge of Architecture. 2000.
- Award, “PIERRE VAGO Award." ICAC -International Committee of Art Critics. London, 2005.
- First Prize, C.O.A.M. Madrid, 2000. Shortlisted, World Architecture Festival. Centro de Investigación e Interpretación de los Ríos. Tera, Esla y Orbigo, Barcelona, 2008.
- First Prize. FAD AWARD 07 Ephemeral Interventions. “M.C.ESCHER”. Arquin-Fad. Barcelona, Sapin 2007.

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