Where Maps Fold — Juan Valbuena, 2020

In Where Maps Fold, Spanish photographer Juan Valbuena explores the fragile intersections of geography, narrative, and belonging. This softcover photobook—generous in scale and meditative in tone—acts as a visual essay on displacement, diaspora, and the limits of cartography in capturing lived experience.

Valbuena’s images are elliptical and layered: personal archives, blurred figures, folded maps, newspaper clippings, and intimate documents coalesce into a non-linear atlas. Rather than locating a place, the book maps out absence and movement—geographies of memory shaped by forced migration and cultural erasure. The Spanish language text weaves in and out of the sequence, offering fragments of story rather than commentary.

Published in 2020, Where Maps Fold belongs to a broader body of work by Valbuena addressing invisible histories and political traces in everyday imagery. It aligns with the sensibility of Délio Jasse or Bouchra Khalili—photographers who fold document and poetics into a new cartography of resistance.

Technical Sheet
Title: Where Maps Fold
Artist / Author: Juan Valbuena
Date: 2020
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Softcover
Dimensions (cm): 24 × 33
Language: Spanish
Pages: 126
Publisher / Editor: Unstated
ISBN: 978-84-17975-40-1
Condition: NEW