Julián Barón (Castellón, 1978)
Statement of intent
I conceive my practice as a form of critical intervention on the language of the image, its power structures, and systems of representation. I work with young people, collectives, and communities using open and situated methodologies that transcend formal education and conventional artistic frameworks.
I am interested in montage as a form of thinking, the archive as a space of conflict, the book as a pedagogical tool, and teaching as an expanded form of creation. Every process I activate — whether a workshop, book, installation, or public intervention — stems from a relationship with the social environment, the bodies that produce, and the images that inhabit us.
I embrace a practice grounded in the ethics of the process, where the focus is not on the outcome but on the connections forged through doing. Authorship dissolves into the collective, education becomes an act of dissent, and artistic practice ceases to be spectacle or entertainment to become a space for symbolic production, friction, and memory.
My field of action is the image as a tool for critical thinking, a catalyst for conversation, and a real possibility for collective transformation.
Practice in motion
I am a photographer, educator, and initiator of projects that use the image as a social tool for critical thought. I trained as an Industrial Engineer, although I left my job as a quality manager at a road signage company to join the collective Blank Paper in Madrid. From 2008 to 2015, I directed and taught photography at Blank Paper Escuela in Valencia, Castellón, and Online. My projects are driven by a constant will to propose perspectives that help weaken rigid collective imagination and challenge official discourses that construct memory, history, and identity through images.
In 2011, I published C.E.N.S.U.R.A., my first book, which received an honorable mention at the First PhotoBook Award (Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation). Since then, I have developed editorial, exhibition, and pedagogical projects that probe the relationship between image, memory, and power. In 2015, I was nominated by Fannie Escoulen for the Discovery Prize at the Rencontres d’Arles, where I presented the installation Régimen visual, which brought together three of my projects: C.E.N.S.U.R.A., TAUROMAQUIA, and Los últimos días vistos del rey.
My work has been exhibited at Centre d’Art Pompidou-Metz, Netherlands Fotomuseum, Get It Louder Beijing, ChangJiang Biennale in Chongqing (China), Arts Santa Mònica, among other venues. In 2016, C.E.N.S.U.R.A. received the Magnum Photography Awards in the Open Series category.
In 2018, I presented the exhibition Régimen Desborde, curated by Jorge Villacorta, at the Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland in Lima (Peru), where a program of parallel activities took place inside and outside the venue. The exhibition gathered several of my projects developed in Spain and Peru between 2011 and 2018.
In 2019, Fundación Max Aub published the photobook El laberinto mágico, a visual essay built on contemporary recreations of battles from the Spanish Civil War. In 2021, this work was shown as a large-scale exhibition at Les Aules, the contemporary art space in Castellón.
That same year, I curated the exhibition Galerna–Sòl by artist Jon Cazenave at the Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, a project that used photographic imagery to explore landscape as a cultural construction and system of representation.
At the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022, I presented the pedagogical exhibition C.E.N.S.U.R.A. LA REUNIÓN, curated by Marta Martín Núñez and Daniel Zomeño at Llotja del Cànem in Castellón. This exhibition documented the creation process of the photobook and its subsequent impact on other collective projects and educational experiences.
In recent years, I have been involved in the creation and coordination of collaborative artistic proposals with a strong pedagogical commitment, such as Horizon, imagenred.org, Contrataller, THE CAGE, Carpetas, Ser libro, Adolescencia móvil, among others.
Current teaching activity
Currently, I am a photography professor in the Cinematography Degree at the Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya (ESCAC), and I lead the workshop Contar con imágenes at the Photography Classroom of the Universitat Jaume I in Castellón. Additionally, I coordinate Fotoliber, an online school that combines photography, experimentation, and visual narrative through live sessions, a photobook library, and a collective learning approach.