Grandal, Ramón

Graduated from the Free School of Fine Arts, he studied Museography and Museology at the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. He arrived in Venezuela in 1993 already with a distinguished career in documentary photography. He worked as a graphic designer until, at the age of 20, he saw the opportunity to work as a theater photographer at the National Council of Culture alongside his mentor, Tito Álvarez, a master of Cuban photography. From his beginnings in the early 1970s and during the first 30 years, his photography maintained a social commitment, but the arrival of "The Americans" by Robert Frank, in the hands of the Swiss Luc Chessex, changed his approach to the image. From his encounter with that North American way of photographing, Grandal generates a new language that plays with the idea of an image that transcends everyday life by seeking a retrospective approach that gives the viewer an opportunity to reflect on the photographed reality. It's a more intimate process: a daily and personal record that, in his own words, expresses "very brief opinions" of a world that he tries to keep in memory, his own and that of anyone who stops to look at them. Ramón Grandal was one of the first Cuban photographers to exhibit in the United States after the end of the Cold War. He has participated in more than 60 collective exhibitions in various countries in the Americas and Europe. Among his encounters with other photographers, the exhibition "Cuba 1933-1992. Two visions: Walker Evans-Ramón Grandal" in France, and "One World, Several Points of View. Encounter with notable photographers: MagnumPhotos/Venezuela," in the Jesús Soto Museum (Ciudad Bolívar) and the Alejandro Otero Museum (Caracas) in 2007, stand out. He has also held several solo exhibitions in Cuba, Spain, Venezuela, Switzerland, and Italy. Some of them together with his wife Gilda Pérez. In 1998, he received the Mention of the Josune Dorronsoro Latin American Photography Prize from the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas; the Unique Prize of the International Festival of Light in 2000, and the Photography Prize from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. Since 1996, he has given lectures and workshops at various universities and institutions. He has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and photobooks. Among his titles are "Camera" (photographic essay, Switzerland, 1980), "The City of Columns" (Editorial Bruguera, Spain, 1982), "Song to Reality. Latin American Photography 1868-1992" (Lunwerg Editores, Spain, 1993), "ExtraCAMARA" (photographic essay, Venezuela), "Memory: Cuban Visual Arts of the 20th Century" (California International Art Foundation, United States, 2003), among others. In 2009, he founded the agency ENPHOCO.