Born in 1970 in Barcelona, Spain
Héctor Mediavilla is a Spanish documentary photographer, born in Barcelona in 1970. He earned a Master’s degree in Business Sciences and an MBA at ESADE (the Higher School of Business Administration and Management in Barcelona). He then worked for several years in the marketing department of a Japanese company before becoming project manager for an innovative concept: sustainable neighborhoods in Catalonia. In 1999, he returned to study, pursuing a Master’s in Cultural Management at the Idec-Pompeu Fabra University.
In 2001, Mediavilla began working more in-depth on his first photographic report, El otro fórum de las culturas. This two-year project already highlighted key aspects of his work, including his social engagement and interest in atypical social groups. His initial aim of critique gradually evolved into a broader attempt to understand human beings and their relationship with their surroundings.
In 2003, he started his project on Congolese Sape during his first trip to Brazzaville, where he had gone to train professional Congolese photographers as part of the “Support for Visual Arts in Congo-Brazzaville” program funded by the European Union. He was the first foreign photographer to explore this unique phenomenon, which reveals everyday African life far from clichés of war, famine, and safaris. This work, completed in 2010 after numerous trips between Brazzaville and Paris, earned awards in competitions such as Picture of the Year, Hansel Mieth Award, Fotopres, PhotoEspaña, CoNCA, and the Center's Project Competition.
Beyond documenting the Sape, Mediavilla has explored topics including the social impact of Mexican family migration, the controversy over coca leaves in Bolivia, Mesoamerican spiritual practices, and the transformation of colonial architecture in Mozambique.
His photographs are regularly published in international media, including Colors, Géo, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Business Week, XXI, Esquire, Internazionale, IO Donna, and Photo. He has also collaborated with institutions such as Casa África, Casa América Catalunya, the French Institute in Kinshasa, the Spanish Embassy in Maputo, and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), as well as NGOs like Intermón-Oxfam and Médecins du Monde.
He was part of the expert group on Documentary Photography and Institutional Strategies in Catalonia (Fotografía documental y las estrategias institucionales en Cataluña) at the SCAN Festival in 2009. He also led the roundtable Conceptualization and Presentation of Photographic Projects during the first Euro-American meeting of photographic collectives (ECO, Madrid, 2010).
His work has been exhibited at venues including the Musée Dapper (Paris), Museum der Weltkulturen (Frankfurt), Galleria Oleiros (São Paulo), the French Institute in Kinshasa (DRC), Musée de Markten (Brussels), and the Museu Marítim de Barcelona. His work is also part of public and private collections.
