Agony in the Garden is a series by Lúa Ribeira created in the peripheries of Madrid, Málaga, Granada and Almería. Inspired by the potential of contemporary counter-culture, she has collaborated with young people to make images that reflect on the alienation and uncertainty of the present era, resulting in a landscape suspended in time, one that appears both contemporary and ancient.
The sequence takes us through a barren, almost videogame-like landscape, where we encounter people who emerge as characters of an environment that is both local and global. The clothing, gestures and signs show affinities with and influence from online worlds and personas, echoing the extremes of hedonism and nihilism, all of which plays out in the backdrop of a rapidly homogenising world.
From this dystopian and sometimes absurd atmosphere, Agony in the Garden reflects on the current phenomenon of material overproduction, widespread precariousness, institutional violence, and ongoing financial, migratory and environmental crises. This visceral feeling of uncertainty permeates throughout the work, whilst Ribeira’s inclusion of religious motifs and imagery nods towards more universal themes
and a suspension of temporality. Underpinning all of this is a sense of tragedy and rootlessness, countered only by the energetic vibrancy of the youthful bodies that parade through the photographs.
Brought together in this book following extensive research and collaboration with her models, Agony in the Garden grapples with photography’s weighted disposition to ‘represent’ reality and create testimonials, leaning instead towards a more allegorical view of the contemporary moment.
The work of Lúa Ribeira is situated at the intersection of the real and the symbolic. Her projects unfold as the documentation of organic encounters, where immersion in context allows relationships to emerge, giving rise to complex narratives and emotions shaped by sociological, political, historical, and economic factors.
Ribeira was born in Galicia (Spain) in 1986 and currently lives in Bristol, United Kingdom. She graduated in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales in 2016 and has since maintained an academic engagement as a visiting lecturer at several universities, including the University of Westminster, the University of the West of England, and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Her work has received several awards and recognitions, including the Firecracker Grant for Women in Photography and the Jerwood/Photoworks Award. Her work has been published in book form by Fishbar (London, 2017), and has appeared in Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now (Thames & Hudson), as well as in Raw View Magazine, in the issue “Women Looking at Women”. Ribeira has been a member of Magnum Photos since 2018.
She was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award and the Prix Pictet 2019. Her work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions at venues including ICP (New York), Impressions Gallery (Bradford), Ffotogallery (Cardiff), Belfast Exposed, Beijing International Photography Biennale, Tabacalera (Madrid), Fundación Seoane (A Coruña), among others.
Her work is currently featured in Close Enough: New Perspectives from 12 Women Photographers in Magnum at CO Berlin, curated by Charlotte Cotton. In March 2023, Dalpine published her first monograph Subida al Cielo, alongside a solo exhibition at Tabakalera (Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain). In 2025, she published her second monograph, Agony in the Garden.