Grand Prix AFEX for French Architecture in the world 2010 Dominique Perrault - Architecture Deep in the heart of Seoul's University district, "Campus Valley" is a landscape more than an architecture. Nature, sports fields, events spaces and academic premises combine, mingle and mix together". A huge "rift" crosses the area, that forms a gentle slope on one side, and a flight of stairs that can be used as terraces on the other. "

Comparison between a mythic image of Ethiopia and an abrupt but fascinating and bewitching reality.

Ethiopia shares an history both ancient and particular with Christianity. Inside troglodytic churches, the worship devoted to the Lord by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was the official religion until 1974. The country welcomes 43,5% of Orthodox Christians in a part of the world predominantly Muslim. Juan-Manuel Castro Prieto makes a statement of this spiritual life with the magical realism that characterized his work.

India, a word that leaves no one indifferent : everyone knows this country without even having been there. In everyone’s mind, India is a country with people living in the streets, caste system, cremation in the Ganges, cows wandering freely, crowds, religion, etc.. I traveled to India to compare these stereotypes to reality, and check the truth of the images I had in my mind. The first contact with this reality was merciless. In the streets without sidewalks, surrounded with people, motorcycles, cars, trucks, ricksaws, cows, bicycles, and by the smoke and noise of thousands of sounds and voices, I understood immediately that India was to be loved or hated, there couldn’t be any...

The capital of Argentina marks its attachment to the old continent in all its streets’ nooks. An atmosphere always challenged by its own position in South America. Buenos Aires is a coastal city of the Atlantic Ocean next to the neighbouring Uruguay. It’s a land of contrast, with a culture coloured by remains of the Spanish colonisation. Between San Telmo district, the plaza de Mayo, and the towers of the business district, the city is building itself in the architectural opposition and complementarity. The town shows us also the weight of History, marked by juntas and colonization.

These « extranos » Juan Manuel Castro Prieto is acquainting us are the result of experiences, explorations, purely photographic researches he’s been doing for years. In black and white and in square format, he does not have another “ theme” than the photography in itself. No matter how they are portraits, nudes, landscapes, still life photographs or the interpretation of a painting, he revels in an obvious pleasure to show and prove that, in photography, operating light is the bottom line. Playing with the shutter speed, the mixing of natural and artificial light, he toys the “pseudo” realism of the silver photography and drags us in a universe both poetic and disturbing. Like a...

The Guadalquivir goes through Andalusia on 657 km. Juan Manuel Castro Prieto followed from its source to its mouth the river that brought power to the cities on its banks and shaped the geography of the country.

The Mentawai archipelago is a group of four small islands located approximately 150 kms from the west coast of Sumatra. It is difficult to get there (the travel by boat from Padang, the capital of the province of West Sumatra, takes 10 hours). This isolated land hosts a native Malay population (around 40 000 people). The authorities tried to modify their way of life, especially the scattered community housing, by creating villages on the coastline. Living mainly of the coconut and tropical essence exportations, the inhabitants of the archipelago have been very much affected by the tsunami of December 2004. The archipelago is also famous for its astonishing surf spots. Juan Manuel...

To the East of Australia, Vanuatu, comprising some 80 islands shaping a Y in the Pacific ocean and better known by its former name of the New Hebrides, has been independent since 1980. It is now a parliamentary republic of 200 000 inhabitants, mostly Melanesians. From Port-Villa, capital of the Efate island that one can take a flight to Tanna. The British navigator James Cook was the first European to set foot on the big southern island of Tanna, in August 1774, attracted by the red light of the volcano of mount Yasur which dominates the village of Ipeukel, where the ones called “John Frum” gather. The story of this strange worship starts with the war in the Pacific, when the Americans...

Juan Manuel Castro Prieto catches Mexico’s colours and proposes a sensorial trip to his viewer. Between Catholics worship, inherited from Spanish evangelization, and darker, remote believes, the photographer explores a territory in which the beyond and its dead are present everywhere.

Comparison between a mythic image of Ethiopia and an abrupt but fascinating and bewitching reality.

Juan Manuel Castro Prieto’s Peru is the hymn of the traveller grateful to have found his land. Swinging between spaces amplitude which can collect a boat on the Titicaca lake, or letting go a car on an advertising -tained road with faces confrontation. Peru is crossed by emotions, tenderness, respectful and peaceful way to travel, which ignore any exoticisms. From the most sincere trip, turned by the necessity, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto brings back a Peru, which doesn’t exist except, in his own experience, and in the poets’ mind.