Normandie

Eduardo Nave

 2003-2005 – 2019 – France

About this series

The respect we feel for ruins has to do both with what is seen and what is not. They are like scars on the body. The terse, torn flesh we see contains the history of a wound that was itself a testimony to an event in our lives. The ruin is a trace and a testimony.
Eduardo Nave’s magnificent frieze encapsulates the turbulent dignity of the trace that has been left behind. His passage through the light of Normandy is a memorable one. The light of the North always has a magical quality, the promise of a spiritual abstraction. Hence the value of the painting of Caspar David Friedrich, revolutionary at the time, with which Nave’s work is exquisitely related. The light of the North is especially difficult for someone on the hunt for images because it demands mettle, subtlety and the unfettered activity of the ‘inner eye’, the one which looks at the world from within and inwardly.
Nevertheless, this meditation, so essential in the beauty of its forms, necessarily includes the trace of human events, and in this case the tragic occurrence of war. Nave’s Normandy is the light of the North, but it is also the blood and violence trapped in the wreckage that recalls the battle. Not the least of Nave’s merits is his ability to integrate the mysterious innocence of the space so harmoniously with the tragedy of a setting where the human drama has been played out. (Rafael Argullol)

Photographer: Eduardo Nave
Nationality: Spanish
Based in: Madrid, Spain
Website: www.eduardonave.com
Instagram: @eduardonave

A graduate of the Escola dArt I Superior de Disseny in Valencia, he holds an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts and Design, focusing on Photography. In 2005, together with another 13 artists he founded the contemporary photography collective NOPHOTO that one year later won the Arco and 2006 PHotoEspaña Revelation Award. In 2014, together with 4 editors, he developed the publication DÚO and in 2016 he created and coordinated the project EL DIARI INDULTAT.
Since 2001 he has been a frequent contributor to national and international editorial media, and the galleries Pilar Serra (Madrid) and Juan Silió (Santander) represent his work.
He has received several awards and grants for his projects, including those as noteworthy as the grant from the Colegio de España in Paris, the visual arts grant from Fundación Marcelino Botín, the visual arts grant from Casa de Velázquez, the visual arts grant from Colección CAM, the FOTOPRES grant from La Caixa, the Authors in Selection Award from Fotonoviembre, the “Fujifilm Euro Press Photo Awards”, the 2010 Photographica Award from the Estampa Art Fair and subsidies from the XVII Visual Creation Competition organised by VEGAP, the third prize of the XI edition of the ENAIRE Foundation Photography Prize, the best book of the year in PhotoEspaña 2018 and Life Framer prize 2021 in “Night Life” category.
He has held countless individual and group exhibitions at various locations, highlights include: the international photography festival Rencontres d’Arles (France), Canal de Isabel II (Madrid), Macuf (A Coruña), San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Madrid), Instituto Cervantes (Paris), PHotoEspaña (Madrid), Tenerife International Biennial Photography Event, Kursaal (San Sebastian), Conde Duque (Madrid), Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía, Spanish Cultural Centre in Lima, Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries; and at contemporary art fairs such as, ARCO (Madrid), DFOTO (San Sebastian), Madrid Foto, Maco (Mexico), ParisPhoto, PhotoLondon, CIGE (Beijing), KIAF (Korea) and Preview Berlin. The next Art Fair will be in Chicago.
His work belongs to private collections and institutions such as the Museum of Spanish Photography, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, the City Councils of Alcobendas, Madrid, Valencia, Murcia, Tenerife, and others, the Ordóñez Falcó Foundation, the Cartier-Bresson Family, the Spanish Parliament, the Spanish Ministry of Industry, National Heritage of Spain, France, Italy and Portugal, the Marcelino Botín Foundation, the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, the Circa XX Collection, and the DKV Collection among others.