Anne James views some moving images of young Spaniards

Dario Sanz Padillo wanted to — and has — created an optimistic series of portraits of young professional Spaniards, who have decide to move to the UK and to change career, to escape the 50 per cent unemployment amongst young people in Spain and to improve their English. This, his first exhibition, is of these young Spaniards. He is currently working on more portraits with a view to future UK and continental exhibitions.

In his photograph of himself, right, Dario is both a waiter, his current job, and his professional self: a photographer. Other young Spaniards featured are Mar, a lawyer who, when her public service contract was not renewed, moved to Oxfordshire to work as an au pair. She is portrayed with her two young charges, one with her dog, the other busy on her i-phone, whilst Mar herself holds a tome on international law.

Another woman, Alba, an engineer, is captured in a hard hat and standing in an empty class room. On moving to the UK she first worked in nightclubs and retail until she found her vocation in teaching physics and maths. All the portraits are in black and white. Sanz Padillo uses a D300 Nikon digital camera and studio lighting. He then edits and completes his images using Photoshop.

Accompanying Relocation are a series of contextual photographs, some of Oxford-shire, the place of destination, others of the places of departure: the Spanish mainland as in Castilian Fields, and of Ibiza.

There are two photographs documenting transition: RF3254 Ibiza–Madrid, and RF 2712 Madrid –London. In each, silhouetted figures with the inevitable suitcase on wheels, traverse airports emblems of the suspended animation that comes between departure and new life on arrival.

Relocation
The Jam Factory, Oxford
Until March 23