Ouka Leele

Sam Jones “Spanish photographer Ouka Leele, star of the Movida Madrileña, dies aged 64” https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/25/spanish-photographer-ouka-leele-star-of-the-movida-madrilena-dies-aged-64


西班牙の写真家、オウカ・リーレ*1が逝去。享年64歳。彼女はフランシスコ・フランコ独裁体制*2の終焉後に起こったMovida Madrileñaという文化運動*3の中心人物だった。


Born Bárbara Allende Gil de Biedma in Madrid in 1957, Leele began drawing, painting and devouring history of art books at an early age. After studying photography, she alighted on what would become her trademark style – an often riotous fusion of monochrome photographic images overpainted with gaudy watercolours.

Stints in Barcelona and New York were followed by a return to Madrid in 1981 and to a capital that was embracing the creative, debauched and often destructive early days of Spain’s post-Franco reawakening.

The social and political upheaval of the time – a smooth return to democracy was by no means a certainty – gave rise to some of Spain’s best-known cultural figures, including Leele, the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar*4 and the photographer Alberto García-Alix*5.