"Hemendik Hurbil / Near Here", Clemente Bernard at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge dedicates an exhibition to Clemente Bernard.

For the past thirty years, Clemente Bernad (Pamplona/Iruñea, 1963) has photographed the major social and political crises in southern Europe. Although his work adheres to the principles of photojournalism, his images rarely circulate in the media that rely on this genre. They can be seen in self-funded publications and in exhibitions where the documentary register that characterizes his work is inscribed within the practices of contemporary art. Hemendik Hurbil / Close from Here is the latest of the projects he has shaped into a book containing 470 images. Here, Bernad brings together one of the most exhaustive representations of the Basque conflict, with photographs taken between 1987 and 2018. The exhibition derived from this project highlights the highly empirical nature of this type of photography, a practice that requires being at the scene, in those moments when violence suffers from-as the photographer himself says-a perverse viscosity.

The representation of the conflict as seen by Bernad is framed between a photograph from 1987 taken in Pamplona/Iruñea and another dated precisely May 4, 2018, in Kanbo / Cambo-les-Bains, a moment that evokes the Arnaga Declaration, which certified the final dissolution of ETA. Between one and the other, time passes in an anomalous manner. The accumulation of events provides no clue that might help to guess how close or far the solution to this conflict-which weighed down the Basque Country for decades-might be. Hemendik Hurbil / Close from Here is based on a flow-without any kind of unbearable doubt-that merges violences of opposing signs. The images that emerge from this story reject any position of cognitive privilege over what is happening. In this way, Bernad dismantles the often unquestioned correspondence between photojournalistic narration and the evolution of events, a critical feature that makes him an anti-photojournalist.

The exhibition can be visited free of charge from Tuesday to Sunday (and public holidays) from 11 am to 8 pm.