Barcelona Metropolis

De l’ombra a la llum [From the Shadows to the Light] is a collection of fifteen black and white portraits that Maria Espeus took in 2017 of women who had suffered gender-based violence. The initiative arose within the framework of a participatory photography project organised by the Setba Foundation. The latter is a cultural organisation that strives to bring about social transformation through art, in an endeavour to shed light on this scourge and empower the victims who have suffered it at first hand.

Five of the fifteen women did not want to show their faces out of fear of reprisal from their abuser. On 25 November 2017, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the portraits were featured in the TMB campaign “Tria la teva causa” [Choose your cause] and were exhibited in large format in the passageway of the underground interchange on line 5. In 2018, during the DOCfield festival, the portraits were shown in the Science Courtyard at the University of Barcelona and, in 2019, in the cloister of the Monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès during the Lumínic festival. It is still a touring exhibition. The selection of eleven portraits we are publishing is accompanied by the words that the writer Rosa Regàs penned specifically for this project.