Dialect
Felipe Romero Beltrán
Loose Joints
English, Spanish
Softcover
176 pages
210 x 300 mm
2023
ISBN 9781912719372
The poetics of documentary, performance, and choreography combine to politically interrogate the dead time of bureaucracy for young migrants stuck in the Spanish legal system.
Dialect covers three years of state violence for nine young Moroccan migrants exiled in Kafka-esque limbo in Seville, southern Spain. When underage migrants enter the country illegally and cannot be verified as adults, their custody remains in the hands of the state – subjecting them to a lengthy process of up to three years to gain legal status.
In this state of suspension and liminality, Beltrán engages with the body as a metaphor: using a carefully articulated language between photography, performance and collaboration, the weight of dead time is registered upon the shoulders of these young men, entering into dialogue with their memories, journeys, and the humiliating mundanity of waiting and migration. Alongside video works and choreographed dance, Dialect breaks new documentary ground to shine a critical light on practices of bureaucratic oppression.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/dialect-felipe-romero-beltran?_pos=1&_sid=1f82728a5&_ss=r)
About the Artist
Felipe Romero Beltrán (b.1992) is a documentary photographer based in Madrid, Spain. He focuses on long-term projects that approach social issues related to political conflicts in Latin America and Spain. Felipe is currently developing a PhD program on photography at the Complutense Univerisity of Madrid and at the same time He is working for magazines as a documentary photographer.
feliperomerobeltran.com
(source: https://phmuseum.com/fromero-beltran#cD0xJnM9MA==)
About the Publisher
Loose Joints is an award-winning independent publishing house based in London, UK and Marseille, France, founded by Sarah Piegay Espenon and Lewis Chaplin in 2014. They collaborate with leading and emerging artists on contemporary approaches to photography in book form. Loose Joints circulates new visual perspectives through a dedicated list seeking to elevate underrepresented voices in photographic discourse.
loosejoints.biz
(source: https://loosejoints.biz/pages/information)
