Laia Abril (1986) is a documentary photographer raised in Barcelona.
She began working on documentary projects in the Balkans, covering the events such as the 13th Funeral of Srebrenica and the Independence of Kosova, first for a Spanish NGO and then for Spanish newspapers. At the same time she was combining photography with her communication career as the Press Coordinator for the exhibition ‘World Press Photo 08’ in Barcelona.
Her photography tells intimate stories and raises uneasy realities related with femininity in modern times. She uses to convey that subtle message, an insider and warm approach to the subjects and combines strict photography with other multimedia tools as video and design.
For the last two years she is being working in a long-term project about eating disorders that opens a new aesthetical and brave path in her the standard ways of approaching the disease, avoiding stereotypes and relish.
Her series “A Bad Day” is about Jo, a 21 year-old English girl struggling with bulimia. For her it’s a food addiction, and also ‘disgusting’. For this reason, she keep it secret from her parents and boyfriend. She explains her obsession is not about losing weight, is about not gaining weight by the huge amount of food ingested daily. A bad day for Jo starts with waking up and taking the 3 bags of food from her closet, run a movie and start binging for 20 minutes, then throwing up the food. This pretended normality reflects in having a near-normal body weight (64 percent of all bulimics aren’t underweight) and is one of the reasons why bulimia is the hardest disorder to diagnose and why it can easily become a chronic disease.
All copyright Laia Abril.
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