AJO

PHOTOESPAÑA. ‘Bello Público’ is the popular micropoet Ajo's personal photo album.  Working for more than a decade in the box office at the Alfil theatre in Madrid, every day Ajo took a picture or two of the theatre attendees who bought a ticket from her.  Over time these images have turned into an archive with more than 1,000 photos- truly portraits of people, faces and body parts; the central figures of a cultural panorama  in the Madrid of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 2000s.

Among those captured by her lens, there are photographers being photographed–Juan de Sande, Ouka Lele, Alberto García Alix, etc.- fathers and mothers and children –Víctor Crémer and Carlita Crémer, Beatriz Bergamín's father, Moncho Alpuente and Bárbara Alpuente, etc.– theatre-goers accompanied by their dogs –Ana D and Perdi, Julio and Santi Molero, etc.- directors both male and female –Icíar Bollaín, Alejandro Amenábar, Daniel Calparsoro, etc. –actors –Charo López, Esperanza Roy, Javier Cámara, etc.– characters from around the music world, where Ajo was involved at the time–Julieta Venegas, Albert Pla, Andrés Calamaro, etc. –neighbors from the area, friends, anonymous people and strangers, etc.…  And each snapshot with a story behind it, which –of course – Ajo remembers well enough to tell.