Biography

Isabel Steva i Hernández, whose pseudonym is Colita (born 24 August 1940, Barcelona), is a Spanish photographer. She trained with Xavier Miserachs i Ribalta, and began her professional career in 1961 as a lab technician and stylist for Miserachs.Initially, she demonstrated great interest in dance photography—almost always flamenco music—and later she also specialized in portraits and journalistic photography. She has had numerous exhibitions with photographs of Catalan artists and singers from the Nova Cançó era to the present. She has published many books. Colita is one of the most important Catalan and Spanish photographers of the last quarter of the twentieth century. She began in the world of photography with Xavier Miserachs, for whom she worked as an assistant. During these early years, she was a follower and disciple of Francesc Català Roca and Julio Ubiña. From 1963-75, she focused on creating a series of portraits of Flamenco dancers and singers. As she is linked with the Catalan cultural movements of the era, she is considered the official photographer of Barcelona's Gauche Divine, a movement of writers, photographers, models, architects, film directors, and many other professionals who began to stand out in that area in their respective fields.She created a series of projects between 1967 and 1979, at the Escola de Cine [Film School] of Barcelona, with directors such as Vicente Aranda and Jaime Camino, who belonged to a film movement born with the idea of creating European, progressive movies in contrast with the official cinematography of the francoist regime. She collaborated in the promotion of the Nova Cançó, making portraits of the singers in the movement, including Joan Manuel Serrat.Colita's work in the press has been published in magazines such as Siglo XX, Destino, Fotogramas, Interviú, Boccaccio, Primera Plana and Mundo Diario.

Throughout her career, Colita has put on more than forty exhibitions and has published some fifty books of photographs. Stylistically, she is closer to the ideas of the Barcelona School, although she is considered an all-purpose photographer. Her work is part of the collections of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.