Toni Catany

Photographer (Llucmajor, 1942)

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Ever since he was young Catany showed his interest in the photographs in the few illustrated magazines that reached that poor and wretched Spain in the post-war period. It was his uncles in Colombia who brought him his first camera. Since then he’s never stopped taking photos.

 

When he was eighteen he moved to Barcelona to study Chemistry, but he gave up the course to work professionally as a photographer. He did some of his first works when he accompanied the Mallorcan journalist and writer Baltasar Porcel on his trips abroad. Some time later he gave up photojournalism and commercial photography almost completely to follow a more artistic and personal path.

 

Since his first exhibition in 1972, he has taken part in over two hundred individual and collective exhibitions all over the world and has published numerous books. These include Natures mortes (1987), Flowers of life (1990), La meva Mediterrània (1991), Somniar Déus (1993), Fotografies (1997), L’artista en el seu paradís (2000) and Venessia (2006).

 

His work has earned him the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 1991 and such important prizes as the National Photography Prize and the National Plastic Arts Prize of the Generalitat of Catalonia in 2001. His photographs can now be found in countless public and private international collections.