Joan Guerrero Luque, considered a master of photojournalism, a committed and honest professional especially sensitive to the tragedies of immigration, died this Wednesday at the age of 84. “The first thing you have to be with the camera is a person, and then a photographer,” he assured. “This is how you can capture photographs that have soul, life and heart,” he repeated.
Born in Tarifa (Cádiz) on March 21, 1940, he developed the bulk of his career in Catalonia, where he settled at the age of 20, beginning his collaborations with different media in 1969, after working in different jobs. He always lived in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where many of his neighbors admired him as a “poet of the image” and for his enormous human quality.
Guerrero was proud to have taken his first photos in Tarifa with a box of matches that he transformed into a camera obscura, and it ended up being a reference for photographers and journalists of the new generations. In his long career he collaborated with the newspapers La Vanguardia, El País, El Periódico de Catalunya, Diario de Barcelona and El Observador.
He reported throughout Latin America and showed his work in around fifty group and individual exhibitions and numerous photography books. Last year, 67 photographers, including Emilio Morenatti, Sandra Balsells, Samuel Aranda and Kim Manresa, participated in the 'Guerrer@s' exhibition at the Barcelona Industrial School, a tribute to the photographer, who also wanted to document “the complex Current situation”.
In 2009 he received the Medal d'Or for Artistic Mèrit from Barcelona and the Singladura Prize awarded by Òmnium Cultural in recognition of the career of people who contribute in a “notable way” to cultural life.
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