The Museum inaugurates the sample of Pierre Gonnord "De Laboris", which brings together unpublished images of the artist that will be exhibited for the first time at the Museum. Gonnord is a self-taught photographer born in France but resident in Spain for more than 28 years and known for his almost continuous and exclusive dedication to the portrait genre. The artist will also present the publication of his project for the Museum's curatorial program "Tender Bridges", origin of the exhibition.

"De Laboris" features 40 photographs and a video portraying people and social groups from environments and activities forgotten or unknown by society and from rural areas threatened by globalization: gypsy clans, day laborers and the last coal miners. The artist's work is also an intense life and photographic experience, as Gonnord lives with these groups before taking his photographs .

The protagonists of the works in "De Laboris" are coal mine workers in Asturias and a gypsy clan of Portuguese-Extremeño ethnicity in La Raya/A Raia, on the border between Spain and Portugal. All of them find themselves, in one way or another, in a territory outside the vital and labor margins of our urban society.

"I have established a way of life and of work based on meeting with others, with other realities that are alien to me, but that also unite me to a single universal condition. I want to feel and celebrate the fact of being alive and fight against the oblivion of some people, to express to my contemporaries my own vision of the realities that I am looking for and finding in my journey and of which I feel solidarity", explains the photographer.

The origin of "De Laboris" lies in the project that Gonnord made for the Museum's curatorial program " Tender Bridges", which proposes a dialogue between contemporary photographers and the production of those pioneers in Spain in the 19th century. Gonnord discovered the portraits ofpast photographers, such as Napper or Laurent, but especially the work of Tenison .

Gonnord has been awarded the award de la Cultura de la Comunidad de Madrid, in 2007, and the award Internacional de Fotografías de Alcobendas, in 2014. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid owns several of his photographs. He has exhibited at the Fundación Telefónica, the Centro Cultural Conde Duque, the Maison Europeénne de la Photographie in Paris, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville, the University of Salamanca, the Atelier des Forges, Les Recontres d'Arles, at the FRAC Auvergne-Ecuries de Chazerat, Clermont Ferrand, and at the Helsinki and Oslo Photo Festival.