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CV  







Raúl Bartolomé is a cinematographer and photographer working at the meeting point of social documentary, cultural heritage, and artistic collaboration. His practice moves between film and still image, shaped by a participatory, therapeutic approach and a long engagement with performance and the body as a site of listening. As a Butoh practitioner, he has photographed dancers and masters across the world, creating a living testimony of the Butoh body as vessel, open to be moved, held in relation with weather, ground, and silence.

In 2023 Raúl undertook an artist residency in Ilulissat, western Greenland, supported by Arctic Culture Lab and developed in collaboration with the Climate Narratives residency at the University of Bergen. The project, titled Tikiusaaq, grew from his fascination with Arctic landscapes and the bonds that form between people and territory at the edge of change. Living with the rhythm of the town, he built relationships with local teenagers and shaped a photographic narrative around identity, fragility, and transition, where iceberg time and adolescent time reflect one another through pressure, drift, and slow transformation. The work developed into a photobook in 2024, with an exhibition planned for October 2025 in Ilulissat.

Raúl has collaborated with director Carlos Saura and broadcasters such as RTVE, and has created visual storytelling for organisations including Greenpeace, Interred, and Asispa. Recent works include the award winning documentary Take Me Where There’s Life on art therapy and Alzheimer’s, and VOCES, a dance work addressing obstetric violence. He is co founder of Human Clay CIC, where he continues to develop poetic, research led projects that bring land, body, and community into the same frame.








SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHY WORK 

 




 

Tikiusaaq. 2025




Tikiusaaq: A species of Arctic flower that begins to appear when the snow retreats in Greenland.

The Arctic, a mythical and legendary space, has fueled my imagination for a long time—with its sublime landscapes, its perpetual snow, and its silence. Living in a Mediterranean area, I have often wondered how one can connect with such a harsh and extreme environment, and what kind of bonds can be formed with a landscape that seems so inhospitable. This curiosity led me to undertake an artist residency in the spring of 2023 in Ilulissat, western Greenland, supported by the Arctic Culture Lab (https://www.arcticculturelab.no/). There, I began to explore these questions through a photographic project that addresses themes of identity, landscape, and territory.

This residency, a collaboration with the Climate Narratives artist residency at the University of Bergen (https://climatenarratives.w.uib.no/), focused on creating narratives around climate change, particularly in the Arctic, offered me the opportunity to deepen my understanding of the environmental and cultural complexities of the region.

During my stay in Ilulissat, after adapting to the rhythm of the land and its people, I formed relationships with teenagers from the community. It was through these interactions that I began to see how similar their experiences were to the Arctic landscape: both in a state of transition and fragility. Like icebergs, which appear stable and robust but are inherently fragile, the cultural and psychological forces that shape these teenagers reflect the pressures of the environment around them. Icebergs, like young people, are shaped by powerful, invisible forces, and although they may appear motionless, they are in constant change and evolution, sculpted by unseen currents.

The effect of the environment on icebergs—causing them to crack and dissolve into the ocean—can serve as a metaphor for the psychological pressures that influence identity formation. These pressures, like the external forces acting upon ice, have been present long before we were born, shaping us in ways that are often invisible but deeply influential. Adolescence, as a stage of transition and fragility, is when these pressures are felt most intensely. Just as ice can be a protective shield, the emotional distancing and isolation that teenagers sometimes experience can serve as a defense mechanism against external pressures in identity formation. We apply cold to soothe wounds.

The Project was realised a photobook in 2024. in October 2025 th ephotographic exhibition will be presented to the community in Llulissat.






Butoh Body. Ongoing







Raúl Bartolomé’s Butoh photography grows from inside the practice. As a long time Butoh practitioner, he has travelled through studios, theatres, and remote landscapes, meeting masters and performers whose bodies carry lineages of transformation. He photographs the Butoh body as vessel, open to be moved, shaped by slowness, gravity, and the quiet intelligence of sensation.

These portraits act as living testimony rather than documentation. The camera stays close to breath, skin, and shadow, holding the dancer in relation with weather, ground, and surrounding space. Across encounters with artists such as Yumiko Yoshioka, Atsushi Takenouchi, and Gio Dust, the work gathers a dispersed archive of presence, a worldwide constellation of bodies becoming.






Hedges: The way of the sun. 2025







Devon hedges are living boundaries, woven over centuries into the English landscape. They shelter wildlife, protect soil and water, and carry cultural memory, holding habitat and heritage in the same breath. The work grows from Raúl’s sustained encounter with rural Devon, walking the lanes, staying with the textures of hedge, mud, rain, and light, and letting the land shape the act of seeing as a bodily practice.

This project uses anthotype, a photographic process made with plant dyes and sunlight. Pigment is extracted from nettles gathered from the same hedges pictured in the images, so the landscape becomes both subject and material, and the hedge enters its own imprint.

The images form slowly through exposure. Light shapes them, time shifts them, weather moves through them. The work holds duration, a porous surface where matter and light touch long enough for memory to appear, breathe, and fade.

The series was shared with the local community during Devon Open Studios in Buckland in the Moor, in the heart of Dartmoor National Park.







Body In  Land. Matter Is Messy, Embodied Ecologies. Group Show. Forum. Stadpark. Graz. Austria.



A group exhibition introducing environmental performance practice and eco somatics to Austrian audiences. Bringing together international artists presented in Graz for the first time, the show gathers photography, audio works, film, text, and installation within an interactive exhibition format where the visitor’s body becomes part of the space and part of the question. The exhibition explores climate change as a physical crisis of bodies and relationships, and asks how perception can shift toward ecological awareness, empathy, and resilience through somatic and environmental dance practices.

Participating artists Anna Kushnerova and Raúl Bartolomé, Anna Casey, Clémentine Antier, Olia Fedorova, Rachel Sweeney, Reza Kellner and Anna Jurkiewicz, Rosalind Holgate Smith, Vanessa Grasse. Curator Minou Tsambika Polleros. Project partner Verein Forum Stadtpark, Raum Kollektiv.












SELECTED SOCIAL DOCUMENTORIES AND ARTISTIC COLLABORATIONS 





Weaving the Threads of Bhutanese Heritage

Feature length documentary, in development, commissioned

A commissioned feature length documentary in development, filmed in Khoma village in eastern Bhutan, home of Kishuthara, an intricate silk weaving tradition sustained through generations of women. The film follows weaving as a living transmission where community, landscape, and daily rhythm weave into one ecology of care.

Grounded in the ethnographic research of Bhutanese heritage scholar Yeshey Choden, the work moves with a slow participatory approach, attending to plants used for natural dyes, the rhythm of water and light, the gestures of making, and the shared spaces where knowledge circulates. The documentary offers an ecology of attention where weaving appears as an art of relation between women, land, and the vibrant life that surrounds them.

Directed by Raúl Bartolomé and Anna Kushnerova. A Human Clay Productions CIC project. Research and cultural collaboration Yeshey Choden. Supported by the Royal Textile Academy of Bhutan. Commissioned with development support from the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. Photography Yeshey Choden.










Suicidio, el dolor invisible

Documentary / 2024

This four-part documentary series breaks the silence surrounding suicide in Spain. Through deeply personal testimonies from survivors, families, and mental health professionals, the series fosters understanding and dismantles taboos. Its gentle pacing and emotional candor give space to stories that are often unheard, while the visual storytelling amplifies their impact with sensitivity and care. A rare and needed public conversation, the series offers not solutions, but presence, empathy, and shared visibility.

Raúl Bartolomé – Co-Director of Photography


https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/suicidio-el-dolor-invisible/








VOCES

Documentary / 2023

VOCES is a hybrid documentary-dance film that confronts the silenced epidemic of obstetric violence in Spain. Created in collaboration with Compañía La Roja and Proyecto Voces, the film gives voice to women who have endured trauma within reproductive healthcare—offering a space for truth-telling through testimony and movement.

Intimate interviews unfold alongside visceral choreography, creating a layered narrative that is both raw and embodied. Drawing on lived experience and academic research—including the work of Dr. Desirée Mena-Tudela—the film transforms individual accounts into collective resistance. It is not only a document of suffering, but also a call to awareness, healing, and systemic change.

The work invites the viewer into a space of reflection, where artistic expression becomes a tool for justice.

Filmmaker: Raúl Bartolomé


https://proyectovoces.es/









Pejac Art Documentation

Through a series of short documentary films, this project follows the interventions of Pejac, a street artist known for his minimalist, politically-charged works across public spaces. The films trace moments of quiet protest, beauty, and resistance—paintings that appear and disappear in doorways, walls, windows, and oceanside ruins. These visuals are more than records; they’re dialogues between artist, place, and viewer. Each piece reflects on urgent issues like climate change, war, and displacement—without spectacle, only the still gravity of art as witness.

Raúl Bartolomé – Director, Cinematographer

https://vimeo.com/782949463?share=copy#t=0
https://vimeo.com/880479998?share=copy#t=0
https://vimeo.com/682878301?share=copy#t=0









El Centro de mi guión

Documentary / 2021

Inside a Young Offenders Institution, a group of teenagers write and perform their own stories on camera. This short documentary captures the raw immediacy of their reflections—honest, fragile, and often disarmingly wise. Rather than explaining or judging, the camera becomes a listener, allowing a space where expression is agency and filmmaking becomes a form of personal reclamation.

Raúl Bartolomé – Co-Director of Photography


https://vimeo.com/26039536









Caer en ti

Documentary / 2023

Movement becomes a collective act of healing and recognition in this documentation of an inclusive dance performance. People of all ages and backgrounds come together through gesture and breath, forming an ephemeral language rooted in vulnerability, trust, and joy. The camera lingers with intimacy on bodies in motion, showing dance as a form of social resistance—fluid, diverse, and deeply human. Created in collaboration with MoveArte Para Todos, the project invites a reconsideration of what performance is, and who it is for.

Raúl Bartolomé – Filmmaker, Photographer


https://www.movearteparatodos.com/caer-en-ti/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7y-BLohoas









Llévame donde haya vida

Documentary / 2021

This intimate short film traces a daughter’s journey through her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Told through fragments—home videos, daily rituals, art therapy—it becomes a poetic meditation on memory, loss, and care. Rather than documenting disease, it attends to the space between: the subtle gestures, moments of lucidity, and quiet beauty of a life shared. The film moves through sorrow and tenderness with humility, celebrating the transformative power of presence.

Raúl Bartolomé – Editor


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgWmHuiJz8A
https://www.imdb.com/es/title/tt20416684/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl









Renzo Piano: Un arquitecto para Santander

Documentary / 2018

This cinematic portrait follows the conception and construction of the Centro Botín, a major public art space designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano. Shot in collaboration with Carlos Saura, the documentary delves into the creative process behind architecture as a cultural force. From early sketches to the finished structure, the film highlights the dialogue between building and landscape, vision and material. A reflection on how spaces shape people—and how light, geometry, and city life converge through design.

Raúl Bartolomé – Director of Photography


https://morenafilms.com/portfolio/renzo-piano-un-arquitecto-para-santander/









Cherkasy, el rostro de una tragedia

Documentary / 2007

In the long shadow of Chernobyl, this documentary visits the Cherkasy orphanage in Ukraine, where children live with the ongoing consequences of radiation exposure. With quiet reverence, the film documents daily life in the orphanage—tender gestures, routines, and the resilience of children shaped by catastrophe. More than a report, it is a testimony: a reminder that environmental disaster leaves scars long after the headlines fade. Supported by Greenpeace, the film has been screened internationally as a call for remembrance and justice.

Raúl Bartolomé – Director


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKDittHo7uc