2021-12-21 FOCUS ON: Federico Estol

We are pleased to welcome Federico Estol in Malmö Fotobiennal 2021. Federico is not only a photographer, he is the artistic director of SAN JOSÉ FOTO festival, coordinating the Photobook Club Montevideo and editor of El Ministerio Ediciones publishing house.

His work has been exhibited at Aperture Foundation, New York; Fundación Atchugarry, Punta del Este; FOLA, Buenos Aires; Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo; MACRO Museum, Rome and GNration, Braga.

Estol’s projects and books are held in private and public collections including by the Tate Modern, London; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; Museu da Fotografia in Fortaleza and the Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum.

External link
www.federicoestol.com
www.lensculture.com/articles/federico-estol-shine-heroes

F. Estol  graduated from the Image and Multimedia Technology Center of Politechnic University of Cataluña – BarcelonaTech.

From Lens culture. “FE: I like to see myself as a medium between the world of visual communication and social causes. I let the experience and group connection conduct the whole process to achieve a final work that both makes sense and will be useful for society. I think that contemporary photography that works with fictional elements tends to move away from social issues and in this way, we waste opportunities to collaborate positively and in a direct way.

The practice of Federico Estol, a photographer from Uruguay refers to his engement as a ‘community-based visual storytelling project’. In Shine Heroes, he works together with a group of anonymous shoe shiners in La Paz, Bolivia to create a zine that presents them as superheroes that come to the rescue whenever a shoe is dirty. The shiners must keep their line of work hidden from their own families and their ski masks give them a new shared identity.