Presentation
The children of Hanoi is part of a personal photographic work. The main subject is hospitals specialising in deformities caused by the tremendous chemical warfare carried out by the Americans in the mid-1970s. Some specialise in upper joint defects, others in lower joints, others in the separation of Siamese twins (Vietnam is one of the countries with one of the highest rates of Siamese twins in the world) and others in aberrations of the face. These are where my project starts from. These are mostly children with the common problem of having a cleft upper lip (genetically attached to the nose), who undergo minor surgery.
Biography
Manuel Navarro Forcada was born in Villarreal, province of Castellón (Spain), in 1969. He is not a professional photographer. He is responsible for Product Control and Colourist in a chemical company (Repol, S.L. www.repol.com).
Self-taught and independent photographer since 1995, he has held many collective and individual exhibitions, given workshops on black and white positivism, Ilfocrhome, and old photographic processes, and has also attended different photographic workshops given by prominent national photographers.
Reportage photography is the modality in which the author usually works, being his most recognized work the photo-reportage Vietnam and Agent Orange (1999-2001). Most of these reportages have an anthropological character as they deal directly with events, celebrations, and ancestral traditions throughout the length and breadth of Spain.
In 2007, with Mi ex-pueblo, he began a series of photographic essays where human reportage and popular culture are no longer present, giving way to documentary photography with a contemporary character and aesthetic. His most recent essay, Seeking Kubrick (2012) is a clear example of this new vision. This new approach, always grouped in photo essays in the current gallery section of this website, usually contains a critical, even ironic, as well as aesthetic and formal discourse on the consequences of real estate speculation on the landscape around us, with A-Publicidad (2010) and Mi ex-pueblo (2008) being the most obvious documents, with the essays Acumular (2010) and Abandon (2011) also standing out.
He often takes part in national photography competitions and has won numerous awards and prizes.
