Jesus Labandeira

Spanish photographer Jesús Labandeira (born 1963) was an amateur photographer during his time as a college student, and worked for more than 20 years in the business sector before taking up photography again. His photographs, as explained by fellow photographer Carlos Cánovas in the prologue of this exquisite book, are landscapes of memory, without sky or horizon—constructions of desire as much as reality. In Labandeira’s photographs, we see the artist seeking his oldest dreams in places “hidden and protected in the snow of childhood.”

This signed and numbered edition of 300 copies features 26 of Labandeira’s photographs of snowy landscapes. The photographer’s dreamlike, snow-blanketed scenes evoke yearned-for, dimly remembered places in richly toned black and white. Labandeira’s work is introspective and poetic, delicate and disquieting, and beautifully served in this limited-edition monograph.

Gradiva is the first monograph by Spanish photographer Jesús Labanderia (born 1963). With 104 dreamlike black-and-white images, this collection is inspired by Wilhelm Jensen's fantastical, homonymous novel published in 1902, which in turn prompted Freud's 1907 study "Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva."