Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez

Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez

I am currently doing a PhD on bias and fairness of second language evaluation at Gothenburg University. If you see me running around, I’m probably running late for a meeting.

Photos at the Department’s Art Exhibition

4 minute read

For a while now I have been thinking of adding post functionalities to show some of my pictures and hobbies. I read up on how to do it, did some implementation tests, and then… nothing. It wasn’t until recently that two situations led me to finally making this post.

We had a small art exhibition at the department. The idea was that each of us could take something that we’ve made to share it with our coworkers. I love taking pictures but I had also been postponing doing the whole postprocessing bit. So I decided to work on some of my pictures to show them in this event.

Ricardo reaching up to attach his prints to the wall, with supervision from the other Språkbanken PhDs
Me putting up my prints at the lunch room, photo by Staffan Melin

The other reason is that a friend asked me to. I posted an Instagram story with a crappy picture of my photos hanging on the curtain. A friend from back home asked if I could share a link to my pictures and I answered that I would work on that and send her the link. Lo and behold, there is a section on my website for pictures now.

The photos from the exhibition hanging from the courtains
The photo I uploaded to Instagram

I selected eleven pictures to print from my time as a PhD so far. They are divided into three themes that I tend to photograph: landscapes, street art, and animals. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking and editing them.

At the Edge of the World

We traveled via ferry to the Faroe Islands to present at NoDaLiDa back in 2023. The whole trip and its leadup was very eventful to say the least, but that’s a story for another place and another time. You don’t find yourself in that region of the world every day, so we decided to go on a roadtrip after the conference.

To simply say that the Faroe Islands are a remote place would be an understatement. You can feel the sheer magnitude of the elements all around you. We drove around for several days and we arrived to the northernmost point of the islands on the last full day of our trip.

It felt as if we were standing at the edge of the world.

I sat down to take it all in. Once the impression subsided, I took a picture in hopes of capturing a fragment of that sentiment.

A photo of the sea at Hattarvík, in the Faroe Islands
“At the Edge of the World” by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Hattarvík, Faroe Islands (2023)

Street Art

we tend to favor certain themes when taking pictures. One of my recurrent themes is street art. I think public art in general is a reflection of what matters to a culture but also shapes our day-to-day experiences. I find it fascinating, to say the least.

I am taking a rather liberal definition of the term street art for this post, though. I think art in public spaces would be a better term, as it also encompasses other forms of expression such as scupltures, graffitti, and whatever the fish is supposed to be. I will eventually make separate posts as each of them is interesting in its own way.

A photo of a graffitti with blood-shot eyes
“Yeah, I’ll get some sleep after the deadline” by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Bologna, Italy (2022)
A photo of street art on the side of a hostel; it depicts a woman with a sailor's hat
“Welcome to Gothenburg” by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Gothenburg, Sweden (2023)
A photo of a collage; it depicts an old lady in front of a human-sized goldfish with a cabin on its back and a phonograph horn jutting out of its head
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Bologna, Italy (2022)
A photo of the reflection of a mural depicting an orange fox
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Vilnius, Lithuania (2025)
A photo of a saint's statue in Malta
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Malta (2024)
A photo of a mural depicting a shaman-like figure
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Marseille, France (2022)

Animals

Another common theme in my pictures are animals and how they interact with human-made environments.

Cats in particular are fun to photograph: they either just chill there, not caring about the world, or act as if people noticing them is a direct threat to their existence. Either way, these reactions are steered and shaped both by the urban environment and by how often and in which ways humans interact with them.

Even though cats are one of the bastions of human culture throughout the ages, other animals are also fun to take pictures of. While driving around during the aforementioned trip across the Faroe Islands, we would often come across sheep that stood in the middle of the road, uncaring. We had to either drive around them or wait until they decided to move on. This led to one of my favorite photographs I’ve taken so far.

A photo of a sheep standing in the middle of the road
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Faroe Islands (2023)
A photo of a a cat sleeping in front of a store's window
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Dubrovnik, Croatia (2023)
A photo of two people photographing a cat
Photo by Ricardo Muñoz Sánchez, Vilnius, Lithuania (2025)

Conclusion

These pictures were taken with intent and chosen not only for the aesthetics, but also because they hold meaning to me. This can be something as small as finding a cat peacefully lying on a windowsill after a long day of walking through bustling streets, to witnessing impressive sights of nature, to fun moments with friends. I could tell a story for each of these pictures as I did for the first one, but I decided to not focus on that for now. I might come back at some photos from this collection later on and elaborate a bit more on these stories. I hope you enjoyed my pictures and my ramblings as much as I enjoyed creating them.

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