José Manuel Ballester

José Manuel Ballester (Madrid, 1960) is a Spanish painter and photographer, winner of the National Photography Prize in 2010, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

Among his numerous exhibitions, places of passage (Valencia, 2003), Setting out (New York, 2003), Room 523 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2005) and Bosques de Luz (Kursaal, 2015) stand out. Collectively, he has exhibited on numerous occasions at ARCO, Art Institute of Chicago - Art Chicago, Art Forum Berlin in Germany and Paris Photo, among other exhibitions. In 1999, 2000 and 2002 he received the National Engraving Prize and his works are part of the collections of the Reina Sofía Museum, Marugame Hirai Museum of Spanish Contemporary Art (Japan) and Basque Center-Museum of Contemporary Art - ARTIUM (Vitoria) , among others.

The National Photography Prize was awarded to him by the Ministry of Culture of Spain in 2010, with the jury considering him deserving of the award "for his personal career, coming from the plastic arts and crystallized with rigor in the field of photography, for his unique interpretation of architectural space and light, and for his outstanding contribution to the renewal of photographic techniques.