A graduate of chemical engineering, Elisa Miralles has been a photographer since 2007, the year she completed her international master’s at Madrid’s EFTI International Center of Photography and Film and submitted her first work to FOTOGRAFIA: International Festival of Rome.
Shortly after, she received grants from World Press Photo, the Asia-Europe Foundation, and the Photojournalists’ Center of the Philippines for the project Urban Youth in Manila, which brings together young talent from 22 countries to develop a project about the urban terrain of the Philippine capital.
She won the first FotoPres prize from Spain’s La Caixa Foundation for her project Recollections Without Memory, an act of anticipated mourning that describes the day to-day life of her grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Her work was included in the collective exhibit Darkside at Fotomuseum Winterthur, alongside such great artists as Antione D’Agata and Sophie Calle.
She has participated in festivals such as the Art Photography Show (San Diego, USA), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), Rayko’s Plastic Camera Show (USA), PhotoIreland, and Goaphoto (Goa, India).
She was a finalist in Unseen (Amsterdam), Discoveries PHotoESPAÑA (Spain), Voies Off (France), Encontros da
Imagem (Portugal), the JAAL Project (Madrid), and the Barcelona International Photography Awards, among others.
She was awarded the Graniti Murales Artist Residency in Sicily, where she began to develop her project She-Wolf, exhibiting this work in progress during her stay there. She was featured in the book Fifty Photographs with History, published by Signo Editores, and in the exhibition of the same name that travelled to various locations inside and outside of Spain.
Her book WANNABE was published by La Fábrica, and that same project was exhibited in the Canal de Isabel II Hall during PHotoEspaña as part of the collection A Certain Panorama, curated by Jesús Micó. This exhibition was shown in various Latin American countries.
She was invited to exhibit, alongside her colleague Lurdes R. Basolí, their collaborative project Being She-Wolves at the Emotiva 21 festival in Muncunill Hall in Terrasa, Catalonia.
She served as editor and curator of such projects as Renascence by the visual artist Rocío Bueno, and Terminal by the photographer Enrique Fraga, both of which became books and exhibitions.
She now balances personal projects with her responsibilities as a commercial photographer, and after twelve years serving as co-founder and education coordinator of the MADPHOTO photography school in Madrid, she is starting her own project as she continues her work organizing courses and teaching photography.