bio

Xevi Muntané was born in Sant Joan de Vilatorrada, Barcelona, in 1977. His only contact with art during childhood was MTV music videos. At 18 he moves to Barcelona, where he trains at the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya. In 1998 he relocates to New York to complete his education at the International Center of Photography (ICP), graduating from the General Studies Program. In 1999 he joins ART+COMMERCE as an intern, where he encounters the work of Steven Meisel and his editorials for Vogue Italia in the early 2000s. Through A+C he assists photographers including Ellen von Unwerth and Taryn Simon, before moving on to David LaChapelle's studio. At 22 he achieves his first publication in i-D, which will launch and consolidate his international career.

For more than a decade, Muntané lives between New York and Barcelona, collaborating with some of his childhood references. In a pre-social media world, he is one of the first Spanish creatives to project himself consistently into the global industry, alongside artists and photographers such as Silvia Prada, Daniel Riera, Txema Yeste and Nico Bustos — a generation that shapes the visual culture of Barcelona in the 2000s.

His style has been defined as a singular kinetic energy: backlit reflections that confer movement to his subjects, multichromatic lighting and flash bursts superimposed on figures, generating futuristic and magnetic images. When he sets these resources aside, Muntané produces austere, minimalist photographs of impeccable geometry.

Throughout his career he publishes in Dazed & Confused —alongside stylist Jason Farrer, one of his most fruitful creative relationships —, as well as Harper's Bazaar, Interview Magazine, V and Vman, BUTT magazine and El País Semanal, among others. His subjects include Kylie Minogue — a collaboration that extends throughout the entire decade of the 2000s —, Pedro Almodóvar, Tilda Swinton, Uma Thurman, Javier Bardem, Victoria Beckham, Naomi Campbell, Pharrell Williams, Charli XCX, Iggy Pop, Arca and Marina Abramović.

Muntané was always particularly interested in the representational dimension of fashion photography. Acutely aware of the mechanisms behind the construction of celebrity visual identity, his portraits seek a deliberate deviation from the preconceived media image — always within the parameters of commercial photography and mass culture. His portrait of Tilda Swinton for Candy magazine is paradigmatic: rather than the androgynous austerity that defines her public persona, Muntané presents her as a hyperfeminine and baroque figure

His photographic work is part of the permanent collection of the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona. In 2013 he participates in the group exhibition A cop d'ull. Cultura visual fotogràfica recent a Barcelona (La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, 2013–2014, cur. Àlex Brahim and Manuel Segade). In 2015 his work is part of Distinció. Un segle de fotografia de moda(Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, 2015–2016, cur. Juan Naranjo), the exhibition in which the museum's fashion photography collection was presented for the first time.

In 2022, in an unexpected turn, Muntané abandons commercial photography and returns to academia. He is currently completing a degree in Art History at the Universitat de Barcelona, where research has become a second vocation. His interests centre on theories of representation, appropriation, the ontology of photography and new digital artistic languages that produce objects. From that experience, My Own Private Art History is born.