Blind Capitan
Laia Abril
Barcelona
1986
“Obviously being blind is not an advantage, but inside a boat you notice it less”.
Sinto Bestard (Mallorca, Spain) became completely blind after an operation seeing mistake 40 years ago. Since that moment he dedicated his entire life to the sea racing the whole world. This is a portrait series of his daily life inside his sailing ship the ‘Snooty Fox’.
Laia Abril is a multi-disciplinary artist working in photography, text, video and sound. After graduating in Journalism she moved to New York to attend ICP photography courses, where she decided to focus her projects in telling intimate stories which raises uneasy and hidden realities related with sexuality, eating disorders and gender equality. Was then in 2009 when she enrolled for 5 years at FABRICA – the Artist Residency of the Benetton Research Centre in Italy; where she worked at COLORS Magazine as a creative editor and staff photographer for 5 years; where she started a book making team with Art Director Ramon Pez.
Her projects have been shown internationally and her work is held in private and public collections as Musée de l’Elysée, Winterthur Museum in Switzerland or MNAC in Barcelona. Over the last years her work has been highlighted getting nominated for grants and awards as Magnum Foundation, Prix Piktet, Foam Paul Huf and selected as a jury choice award at Santa Fe Center or Plat(f)orm PhotoMuseum. More recently she has been awardered with the Revelación Photo España Award, the Fotopress Grant and the Madame Figaro – Rencontres Arles award.
