Rita Puig-Serra presents Anatomy of an Oyster by Anna Manubens. With this project she won the tenth edition of Art Photo Bcn and is the image of the official poster for this year’s edition.

The mother-of-pearl, which will eventually become the pearl, begins to form when a foreign element is introduced into the oyster. Anatomy of an Oyster is a journey into the past, a journey backwards to revisit childhood places necessary to understand the present. It traces a story of violence, revision and integration based on the abuse suffered in the bosom of the family when the author was a child. But, above all, it is an attempt to tell what she feels needs to be told. A way of telling what could never be revealed to an absent mother. And, at the same time, a way of telling it to oneself. In this descent into the depths of remoteness, images of the pearl-forming process accompany the photos, as well as brief texts, which capture her emotional, bodily and family memory. The pearl, which is nothing more than the autobiography of an oyster, is the result of this search: carried out in order first to find it, then to assimilate it and finally to extirpate it.