Adentro

Biography of the director

Pau Coll is a photographer, documentary maker, coordinator of participative photography workshops and founding member of RUIDO Photo (2004, Barcelona). Pau has produced some twenty photographic and documentary features around the world in countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, Algeria, Nepal as well as in Europe.

As part of his documentary photography work, Pau has specialised in prison systems in several countries, including a feature on prison overcrowding in El Salvador, the world's most violent country. Pau has also tackled migration issues, including the Mediterranean refugee crisis and the route followed by Central American migrants through Mexico, plus he has covered humanitarian emergency situations like the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

At the same time, Pau Coll has been working since 2005 on community intervention social projects involving participative photography, especially in Catalonian prisons. Based on his prison work, Pau directed the short film La quinta del chabolo, which received the Social Welfare Media Award from Barcelona City Council, and the full-length film Inside, shortlisted at the 14th DocumentaMadrid Festival.

Other major participative photography projects are workshops with Saharan refugees in Algeria and with the punk community in Cuba. The material that came out of these workshops was compiled respectively in the book Testimonis de l’oblit, el poble Saharauí a l’exili (Testimonies of Oblivion, the Saharan People in Exile) for Catalan NGO Amics del Poble Saharauí (2008) and the book with double cover Kuidado ke muerden (Careful, They Bite) about the Cuban punk movement.

Pau Coll has obtained a number of national and international photography awards, including the Open Objective prize awarded by the Valencian government and EFE news agency (2009). He was also a finalist for the Gabriel García Márquez Journalism Research Prize (2013) and an Alexia Foundation grant (2014). Pau Coll currently teaches photojournalism at the CFD (Centre for Documentary Photography) in Barcelona and at the IEFC (Institute for Photography Studies of Catalonia).