Milena Villalón was born in Barcelona in 1988, where she grew up and lived until 2012. Because of the crisis at that time in Spain she decided to move to Vienna and, one year after, to Berlin. There she studied photography at Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie, focusing on documentary, journalistic and artistic genres. She does her final project under the direction of Werner Mahler, showing a visual history among women. She took part in different workshops with Ute Mahler (fashion workshop in Halle, Germany) and Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris (“The art of editing” at Fotografiska Museum, Stockholm). Since then she works as an independent photographer paying attention to the human being and the sporadic, while the camera serves as a conduit to meet people.
About ‘Carnet de Route: l’Afrique‘ – words by Milena Villalón:
The project Carnet de Route: l’Afrique has been growing organically during the last two years after my trip to Africa. These pictures are a personal record through my journey around Morocco and Senegal. The aim of that trip was to work in an NGO in Senegal, but as I had the chance to travel longer I decided to explore the continent, touching different photographic genres such as editorial commissions and documentary photography. I would say the topic of my pictures is the daily life of Africa, showing street scenes from Casablanca to the dusty sandy roads of Dakar. During this journey I got to meet different people, whom 2 of them illuminated my path and changed the experience of being there. Many notes and reflexions of life and the way I see the photography medium has been written in a notebook during that trip. The camera was an excuse to get closer to all the people, as she opened to me many doors that otherwise would have been close. I am currently working on the book from this project, as it seems the right means of expression to present this work.
