Angel Albarrán and Anna Cabrera have worked collaboratively as art photographers since 1996. A rich inner philosophy about memory and experience — and an alchemical curiosity for photographic printmaking — guide their aesthetic practice. Influenced by both occidental and oriental thinkers and artists, their photographs question our assumptions of time, place and identity in order to stimulate a new understanding of one’s own experience and perception. For the artists, “being conscious of our surroundings isn’t just an important part of life —our surroundings and how we interpret them is life as we know it.”

"The reflective work of Alabrrán Cabrera arises from a foundation of analog processes made in the darkroom. As master printers for many celebrated photographers, the duo specialized in producing platinum-palladium editions while developing and eventually focusing on their own creative practice. The selection of early prints on view at Marshall Contemporary displays the origins of their compositional explorations using negative space, askew orientations, and cosmic abstraction which continue to be implemented in later works.

In order to bridge the tactile nature of their earlier work as black-and-white printmakers, Albarrán Cabrera began implementing the use of fibrous and semi-translucent Japanese washi paper for a new direction into color work as featured in their ongoing portfolios The Mouth of Krishna and This is you (here). The sublayering of gold leaf that followed was inspired by a range of art-historical origins from Russian Orthodox Iconography and Byzantine painting to, more clearly, Japanese Byōbu folding screens and printmaking techniques. The metallic layer is never overtly apparent, only subtly glowing through the photograph's highlights and giving the print an overall iridescent warmth, shifting in intensity when viewed at an angle."

For more information, visit Marshall Contemporary. Alabrrán Cabrera also have a new book, Pájaros, published by Editorial RM.