Carlota Guerrero: “Women are goddesses”

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he has created a universe and an own language that is as mysterious as it is attractive, basically featuring women, their body and their connection with nature. Her re-reading of classical Art takes her to disturbing terrains where she achieves a radical beauty without any sign of the image that most sophisticated brands offer: a woman as an object of desire.

Carlota explains that from a very young age she was very visual, but that at the same time she was afraid to express herself at an artistic level. It was not until her friend Olga de la Iglesia, also a photographer, gave her an analogical camera as a gift that she discovered, by overexposing the photos by mistake, a whole universe of textures and colours. All changed at that point.

Analogic photography fascinated her for various reasons. The final result was a physical and palpable object, but there was also a realization of “the beauty of error” and, of course, of all that can mean a single photo.

Her first photos were self-portraits of her friends in nature. “It was a time when we were going with my female friends to Cadaqués and the Balearic Islands and we used to be naked on the rocks. It was a small revolution, a great feeling of freedom. A time when we began to mature and be aware of our body and the vision we had of ourselves”.

As she began to share her images, she also started to receive responses and feedback. She felt that those images had a weight. “It was important that, as a woman, I was portraying other women and that the image I was showing felt very supportive. It was a safe space in which we all felt free”.

“Being in a woman’s body, my first interest has always been this. Moreover, my father died when I was 15 years old and I was raised by my mother and my sister. Also, since I was a teenager, I’ve always had a very solid group of female friends who are like my family. I am fascinated by their beauty and solidarity. For me women are goddesses and I try to express it in the maximum possible ways “.

She defines herself as a very anxious person who has always had an obsession with the balance and equilibry, to compensate. “I was a very traumatized girl with many problems and Art has always been very therapeutic for me. I feel that I have many demons inside and I try to project the opposite in my images “.

One day she received a phone call from Solange, Beyoncé’s sister. She had seen her photos on Instagram and she wanted to count with her in the Art direction and the image production of her second album, A Seat at the Table, which has a powerful sense of society and a racial message. That changed the life and career of Carlota and placed her, from one day to the next, in the international market, with a representative in London and job offers for the most sought-after brands from around the world. And that’s exactly where this artist is currently working, as shy and sensitive as she is, but at the same time as determined and energetic she proofs everyday. She works with the production company O, founded by Luis Cerveró and where are also employed the most innovative and emerging talents of photography, audiovisual making and Art direction.

Carlota has burst in like a great breath of fresh air in the advertising world, saturated with clichés and tainted images since ancient times. “It is important that I, as a woman, take photos of other women and that the models, at the end of the session, tell me how comfortable they have been. Even more, how different it is to be photographed by a man than by a woman. In the end we act as mirrors. I know what a woman wants! It did not make sense that for so many years the only ones who decided how the image of women was recreated in the collective imagination were men. It’s absurd”.