Ana Teresa Ortega

The work of photographer Ana Teresa Ortega has a first stage focused on the investigation of mass media and mass culture with hybrid pieces between photography and sculpture. Subsequently, Ortega has focused on documenting emblematic spaces of our country's collective historical memory: the abandoned spaces of schools that were places of learning in the past; places of knowledge to advance the understanding of science in Spain, cut short by the civil war; buildings and places that witnessed Francoist repression during the civil war and the post-war period, used as prisons or concentration camps; public works built during Francoism by political prisoners converted into forced labor. Ortega investigates, documents, and photographs to reconstruct memory and prevent oblivion. Her photograph "Albatera" belongs to the series Silenced Cartographies, and serves as a document of the Francoist concentration camp located in Albatera (Alicante), one of the harshest after the end of the Spanish civil war, and which would remain open until 1939.