Esther Garrison

Biography

Located between Chinchón (Madrid) and Stockholm, Esther Garrison is a sustainability professional and photographer focused on documenting the relationship between people and their environment, whether natural or urban, past or future.

Her interest in documentary photography started in 2016, when through her job she witnessed the impact of extractive and energy industries on remote communities. She began to document photographically with her Fuji XT1, a legacy from her father, the photographer Manuel García Quintana.

Her gaze focuses on the harshness of the human condition in the face of environmental degradation and human rights abuses, always presented with a beautiful and careful aesthetic. A constant presence of loneliness in a hyperconnected world converges in her photographic career.

This resulted in award-winning projects such as: “Where? In Karaganda”, which documents the coal route in the interior of Kazakhstan and its effect on one of the most polluted cities on the planet: Temirtau. This project was a finalist in the ENAIRE 2023 Award.

“Transiberian to the Closed City” led her to win the PHotoEspaña Scholarship and has turned into her first photobook.  The project reflects a parallel between the current situation of the inhabitants of Russia's Closed Cities and the country's current state of isolation while questioning the definitions of freedom and the concepts of corporate responsibility.

In 2024 she started the project “Something Wicked This Way  Comes”, the result of a trip to Washington in early 2024 where the photographer realized that Trump's resurgence was real. Here, architecture becomes a mute witness to the disintegration of democratic institutions. A narrative where values ​​and principles blur, submerging us in a sea of ​​uncertainty.

Garrison defines herself as “a photographer of different registers and interests, from the artistic to the street, or the landscape to the documentary.   Emotions direct my impulse to document or capture the decisive moment. It is a tireless search for evocation and expressing my inner self”

You can learn more about her career on the Fujifilm Spain Podcast by clicking here.

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