Carlota Guerrero: "Women are goddesses"

Photographer, filmmaker, and artistic director, her images are an absolute celebration of women and an uninhibited reinterpretation of classical beauty.

12 march of 2021 at 22:17h

[dropcap letter="H"]

as created a universe and a language of her own, as mysterious as it is attractive, starring basically women, their bodies and their connection with nature. Her reinterpretation of classical art leads her to unsettling terrains where she achieves a radical beauty, stripped of prejudices, which has become an object of desire for the most sophisticated brands.

Carlota says that since she was very young she was a very visual child, but she was afraid to express herself artistically. And it wasn't until her friend Olga de la Iglesia, also a photographer, gave her an analog camera that she discovered, by overexposing photos almost unintentionally, a whole universe of textures and colors.

Analog photography fascinated her for several reasons. The final result was a physical and palpable object, there was also a fascination with "the beauty of error" and, of course, with causality, everything that could happen in the course of capturing an image.

The main subject of her first photos were some self-portraits and, above all, her friends in nature. "It was a time when my friends and I would go to Cadaqués and the Balearic Islands and we used to be naked on the rocks. It was a small revolution. A great feeling of freedom. A time when we were starting to mature and relate to our bodies and to the vision we had of ourselves."

As she began to share her images, she also began to receive responses and feedback. She sensed that it had weight. "The fact that, as a woman, I was portraying other women and that the image we projected was so supportive was important. It was a safe space where we felt free."

"Being in a woman's body, my first interest has always been that. Also, my father died when I was 15 and I was raised by my mother and sister. And, since I was a teenager, I have always had a very solid group of friends who are also like my family. I am fascinated by their beauty and solidarity. For me, women are goddesses and I try to express it in as many ways as possible."

She defines herself as a very anxious person who has always had an obsession with balance and equilibrium, to compensate. "I was a very traumatized child with many problems and art has always been very therapeutic for me. I feel like I have many demons inside and I try to project the opposite in my images."

One day Solange, Beyoncé's sister, called her. She had seen her photos on Instagram and wanted to count on her for the art direction and image of her second album, A Seat at the Table, which has a powerful social and racial charge. That changed Carlota's life and career and placed her, overnight, in the international market, with a representative in London and job offers for the most sought-after brands worldwide. And that is exactly where this artist, as shy and sensitive as she is determined and energetic, currently moves. She works with the production company O, founded by Luis Cerveró, and which includes some of the most innovative emerging talents in photography, filmmaking, and art direction.

Carlota has burst in like a great breath of fresh air into a world, that of advertising, saturated with clichés and stale images from remote times. "It is relevant that I, as a woman, photograph other women and that the models, at the end of the session, tell me how comfortable they felt. And how different it is for a man to photograph them than for a woman to photograph them. In the end, we act as mirrors. I know what a woman wants! It made no sense that for so many years the only ones who decided how the image of women was presented in the collective imagination were men. It's absurd."

Filed in