Spanish photographer Cristina de Middel is a former photo-journalist who distributed her 2012 narrative photo book, The Afronauts, from her bedroom. It was nominated for this year's Deutsche Börse prize (now selling on Amazon for $4000). 

We are excited to welcome Cristina to New Zealand for the first time. Cristina will describe the steps it took from discovering photography as a student to publishing the best photo book of 2012 focusing on the conceptual evolution of her professional career that started in the newspapers and ended up questioning the establishment in Photography and its value as a document. 

The Afronauts: In 1964, after gaining independence, Zambia started a space programme in order to send the first African astronaut to the moon. De Middel sequences her beautiful colour photography with manipulated documents, drawings and reproductions of letters, presenting them as almost folkloric inlays alongside fashion illustrations and technical sketches.