Manel Armengol

Selected Works | Cv | Exhibitions

Manel Armengol lives and works in Barcelona. He studied journalism and photography and during the 70s he worked as a freelance photojournalist for independent daily newspapers and magazines in Madrid and Barcelona. His photographs depicting police repression against a peaceful protest for freedom in Barcelona, 1976, were the first step towards being recognized in the world of photo-journalism after they appeared in the international press. During four years he directed a number of political and social news reports travelling as a correspondent in the Eastern countries or in the United States.

In the beginning of the 80s a serious accident forced him to a long recovery and to abandon photojournalism almost entirely. From that moment on Armengol changes the subject matter of his work and his approach to photography. He recaptures the black and white of the early 90s and starts to do large format nature photography for the series Elementos [Elements].

His first exhibition took place at the Galería Spectrum-Canon, Barcelona, in 1980. Since then he has shown his works regularly in exhibitions such as: Retrats d'Herbes at the Instituto Botánico, Barcelona, in 2005, Herbarium at the Triangle Gallery, Barcelona, in 2008, “MANEL ARMENGOL. TRANSIÇÕES. The 70s in Spain, China, United States”, at the Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa (Photographic Archive), and Terrae at the Galeria Tagomago, Barcelona, in 2009.

He has published several books, among which El jardín de los Guerreros (1976), Voices of Water and Memories of Winds (2001), Herbarium (2007), Terrae (2009) should be emphasized. He is represented in various public and private collections in Spain, United Stateas and Japan, such as the MNAC (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) permanent collection and the Fundació Foto Colectania collection in Barcelona.