His earliest experiences with photography came out of his research into his rich family library, which was filled with examples from the world of culture and art, by way of archeology, naturalism, scientific excursionism, anthropology, and the fine arts.

He began his research into images through botanical macrophotography. Soon after (1956), he delivered his first lectures and gave his first technical workshops at the Agrupación Fotográfica Cataluña in Reus.

With the help of friends in Belgium and Switzerland, in 1960 Ribas i Prous discovered the world of documentary photography through the catalogue of the “The Family of Man” exhibition by Edward Steichen and made contact with inspirational artists such as Lucien Clergue.

In 1961, in the context of his lectures on photographic technique and the history of photography, he founded a “group of young photographers”, who would later become members of the Agrupación Fotográfica Reus.

Throughout 1967, Ribas i Prous formed relationships with various historians and intellectuals of UNESCO in Paris, sharing his research and documentation despite the censorship of the time.

In 1972, he started the first major formative, practical course in Spain on the history of photography. Since then, he has put together specialised courses on topics ranging from photographic processing to avant-garde trends, with a focus on historical photography and historic techniques such as Ambrotype and the Collodion wet place processes. By 2019, Ribas i Prous had taken part in the planning of 800 courses.

Pioneers the likes of Pedro Olaya, José Gago, Miguel Angel Pérez, and academic artists such as Pierre Brochet, Jean Dieuzaide, Eric Renner and Quinn Jacobson accompanied him during a period of creativity and research that culminated in a large number of exhibitions and events such as the “Revela’t” festival at the Ateneo Santa Lucia or the London Analogue Festival.

In 1979, he founded the Historical Archive of the Agrupación Fotográfica Reus with the aim of preserving visual patrimony, a painstaking, research-heavy endeavour that involved recovering over a thousand family archives.

Between 1990 and 2005, thanks to a collaboration between Caixa Tarragona and the Reus City Council, he investigated, organised and personally presented more than 300 exhibitions, thereby establishing a collection of over 60,000 pieces, following traditional methods of conservation.

Ribas i Prous was for a time considered one of Spain’s greatest, prize-winning photographers, with more than a thousand awards under his belt between 1960 and 1980, and 2005 and 2021.

Internationally, he has been honoured with more than 200 awards, among which are 53 gold medals and 89 silver ones.

He has received various notable mentions in the former USSR. For example, at the 1978 International Photography Exhibition of Moscow and for two of his submissions to the International Pravda Prize in 1979 and 1981, during which time he struck up a friendship with Dmitri Baltermants, known as “the Eye of Russia” and a member of Magnum Photo.

Ribas i Prous has been the driving force behind various collective projects that have gone on to receive fourteen major international awards and gold medals, particularly in Central Europe and the Balkans.

In the mid-seventies, in conjunction with the Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique, Ribas i Prous put together seven exhibits composed of more than 500 large-format pieces to be exhibited and archived at various cultural centres and museums in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, Italy and England.

He has participated in more than fifty solo shows across Europe and has taken part in various group travelling exhibits in France, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Ukraine, England, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belorussia that were later also displayed in various cities of Spain.

He has had more than 90 personal travelling exhibits in more than 300 centres and museums across Spain, and has participated in 65 major group shows.

He has served on the jury of more than 100 photography exhibitions worldwide and has collaborated with various magazines and professional photography journals. His work has been featured in more than 300 books.

In his more than fifty-year career as a photographer, his work has ranged from images that capture nature and ethnography, experimentations with pigment and rudimentary photographic processes, the search for beauty in portraiture, and essays in late pictorialism to idealist and technical approaches and the “new objectivity” of Otto Steinert.

More recently, his fascination with “poor photography” has led him to experiment with artisanal pinhole photography.

Advised by his father Joan Ribas, at over eighty years old, as to what he regarded as the “Anthropology of the Image” and the need to conserve images of places and spaces at risk of disappearing, Ribas i Prous drove a group restoration effort that would culminate in thirty-three annual portfolios featuring images that bear witness to abandoned masías or country homes, age-old folk customs, transhumance, nature, the rural world, abandoned or ruined villages, architectural modernism, abandoned chapels and monasteries, agricultural work and peasant farmers, rivers, old shops and businesses, and an endless array of forgotten landscapes.

Josep Maria Ribas i Prous’ work can be seen in more than 96 museums, art centres, collections, and private funds, including the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, the Real Academia de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, and the Photomuseum in Zarautz.

Ribas i Prous has received several honorary titles for his work promoting the culture of photography, among them:

• 1976 - The Silver Medal for Municipal Merit – Reus City Council
• 1985 - First in Spain to be named Master of the Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique – FIAP (MFIAP)
• 1991 - Excellence for Services Rendered – FIAP (ESFIAP)
• 1992 - National Photography Prize – Confederación Española de Fotografía
• 1995 - Honorary Member – Federación Catalana de Fotografía

A selection of Ribas i Prous' work as an advisory member:

• Society for the History of Spanish Photography – Dr. Miguel Ángel Yáñez Polo – Sevilla
• Member of the advisory board of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya – MNAC – Barcelona
• Member of the advisory board of Centre de la Imatge Mas Iglesias – CIMIR – Reus

His work has been featured in more than 300 books, among them:

• 1995 - Els nostres fotògrafs, I - Els pioners - Reus City Council
• 1996 - Las fuentes de la memoria III, fotografía y sociedad en la expaña del siglo XXI - Publio Lopez Mondéjar - Lunwerg
• 2002 - Diccionario Espasa - Fotografía
• 2003 - Historia de la fotografía en España - Publio Lopez Mondéjar - Lunwerg)
• 2005 - Fotografías de la memoria, el siglo XX en imágenes" - Fundació Caixa Tarragona
• 2006 - Diccionario de los fotógrafos Españoles - La fábrica - Madrid
• 2011 - 1000 Imágenes de la historia de Reus - Reus City Council
• 2012 - La voz de la imagen - Publio Lopez Mondéjar
• 2012 - Maestros de la Fotografía - Subdirección General de Promoción de las Bellas Artes

Drawn to stories of human interest, and a great admirer of contemporary authors such as Cristina García Rodero and artists the likes of Dorothea Lange, who revolutionised documentary photography, Herrera began his education thanks to the Agrupación Fotográfica Reus, where he participated in a series of classes and workshops held between 1970 and 2005. His impressive trajectory as an artist includes a wide array of field work—from researching and observing the most modest examples of artisanship and costumbrismo, folk customs, celebrations, romerías, and religious pilgrimages, to the study of natural aesthetics and how it relates to architecture.

For his photographic essays on the Delta del Ebro, he interviewed fishermen and spoke with crab fishers as they stood beside their handcrafted boats, culling their lived experiences and impressions. He also participated in traditional get-togethers and celebrations that took place in the “encañizada”—an area where, with a maze-like structure made of canes and nets traditionally used for fishing, the rice harvest was done “the old way.”

Herrera was born in Batea, in the Terra Alta region, known for its generous, precious wines. Batea is on the Camino del Ebro, which continues all the way to the Camino de Santiago. In fact, “Paseo por el Ebro,” a portfolio of typical del Ebro landscapes published in 1995 alongside a text by historian Dr. Pere Anguera, is one of the artist’s most important works of photographic reportage.

Also significant are Herrera’s photographs of the Spanish transition to Democracy, most of which were taken in Barcelona between 1977 and 1979 and show moments of joy and solidarity in the context of a momentous historical event.

Throughout the years, Herrera has participated in Good Friday celebrations, and his work has memorialised a traditional Via Crucis procession held in La Selva del Camp, which winds through delicate mountain paths and ends at a station of the cross, where the priest delivers a sermon. This documentary work, which groundbreaking photographers have disseminated since the 1950s, was compulsory for photojournalists of Herrera’s generation. After the event, he and his companion photographers would meet at a small restaurant to enjoy a typical austere Lent dinner: sardines sautéed with garlic and green beans. The photographs they took of this procession led to a stream of important prizes and exhibitions across Spain and the world.

Herrera’s work stands out for its ethnographic value, which is inseparable from his interest in natural landscape. Some of his photographs in this vein, such as “Montsant, montañas de Prades y Serra la Llena” were part of a travelling group exhibit under the title “Allà dalt és Siurana,” memorable for the historic context it depicts: Occitan migration to Catalonia from the twelfth to the fourteenth century following the Albigensian Crusade.

After several annual visits to the neighbouring region of Maestrar, in Castellón, Herrera began a series of descriptive works about religious rituals, and pilgrimages in particular. Among these is “Els pelegrins de les Useres,” a traditional fourteenth-century romería that stretches thirty-five kilometres, all the way to the Sant Joan de Penyagolosa sanctuary, located at the top of a mountain. There, the pilgrims—thirteen men from the area—prayed for water, a good harvest, and against the plague. During this pilgrimage, the silence was only interrupted by the sound of medieval songs. In order to complete his work, Herrera had to spend several nights with the men, capturing their liturgies and lived experiences. All of this formed part of a major photography exhibition in Reus, which opened in 1997 at the Municipal Archives, and was subsequently shown in various towns.

A large part of Herrera’s work explores popular subjects such as wrought iron, ceramic glaze, and architecture—in particular old wineries, which have been described as the cathedrals of wine for their stateliness and beauty—as well as industrial archeology and architectural modernism, especially the work of Antoni Gaudí and the celebrations held in his honour in 2002.

Herrera has received hundreds of prizes from photography contests across Spain, among which are two Premios Ciudad de Reus, Medalla Gaudí, in 1987 and 1996. Also worth noting is the Premio Beca Ciudad de Reus, which he received in 1996 and allowed him to continue his studies into nature-related subjects. In 1998, he was awarded the X Premio Nacional in the category of Agriculture and Livestock Photography by the Excma. Diputación de Salamanca and in 1999, the Premio Fuente-Obejuna for his photographs of Semana Santa. Most importantly, Herrera was granted the Grand Prize for his work on Antoni Gaudí in 2002 in Barcelona.

He has been a collective recipient of a Gold Medal at the following international events:

• 1982 and 1987 - International Photo Club Exhibition Photographic Art - Riga, Latvia
• 1988 - Grand Prix International Salon - Vsetin, Czechoslovakia
• 1989 - International Exhibition “Fotosalon Uzvara” - Uzvara, Latvia

He has participated in over a hundred travelling exhibitions, among them:

• 1994 - “Natura“ - Museu d’Art i Història de Reus, which received a notable mention in the contest “Primavera Fotográfica a Cataluña”
• 1997 - “Llorenç Herrera / Naturaleza“ - Museo Provincial de Lugo
• 1998 - “Imágenes de mi gente“ - Museu d’Art i Història de Reus, which received a notable mention in the contest “Primavera Fotográfica a Cataluña”
• 1999 - “Del Ebro a la mar“ - Fundación Caixa Tarragona, a group travelling exhibition through Catalonia
• 1999 - “Gaudí, un reusense universal“ - Agrupación Fotográfica Reus and publication in an annual folio
• 2001 - “Semana Santa a la Selva del Camp“ - Exhibition held at Galería de la Capilla de Sant Pau
• 2002 - “Gaudí, una reinterpretación fotográfica“ - Centro Cultural Gran Vía - Logroño
• 2003 - “Paisajes de Montsant, Prades y Serra la Llena“ - Museu d’Art i Història de Reus
• 2009 - “El instituto Pedro Mata (de nou lluirà)“ - Exhibition held at the Galería de la Sede de la Agrupación Fotográfica Reus and publication in an annual folio
• 2010 - “Exposición homenaje a Ramón Roig“ - Group exhibition at Siurana Abbey
• 2010 - Gaudí Centre de Reus - Permanent installation of an original photograph illustrating the parallelism in Gaudí’s work and its natural details
• 2013 - “USA tintypes & ferrotypes 1856/1888“ - Exhibition of the artist’s private collection of tintypes - Revela’t contest – Vilassar de Dalt, Barcelona
• 2015 - “Ferrotipos 1856/1880 / Época del oeste americano / Homenaje a Quinn Jacobson“ - Pieces from the artist’s private collection of tintypes – Museo Central de Reus

The following is a selection of international exhibits Herrera has taken part in:

• 1989 - Galería AGFA / Permanent Photography Exhibition – Buenos Aires, group show by the Agrupación Fotográfica Reus
• 1990 - La Casa del Teatro Sala Paul Guidicelli – Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, group show by the Agrupación Fotográfica Reus
• 2010 - Solo exhibition on nature photography – Llorenç Herrera – “Diálogos con Oriente” – Instituto Cervantes of Damascus / Institut Ramón Llull (Programa Alianza de Civilizaciones) – Mustafa Ali Gallery-Art Foundation – Syrian Ministry of Culture – Damascus, Syria