Draft:Ruth Baza

Ruth Baza Espinilla ( born february 29th, 1972) is a Spanish author, journalist and photographer. She belongs to the so-called Generation X for her contribution to Spanish literature during the 90s and early 21st century, and shares with authors such as Gabriela Bustelo, Roger Wolfe or Nicolás Casariego a literary style impregnated by rock aesthetics, the audiovisual and commercial culture, fundamentally Anglo-Saxon, pessimism and existential anguish, reinforced with a language between lyrical, critical and direct.

Early Life
Ruth Baza was born in Madrid. Her parents divorced when she was a little child and, due to her father's work, she spent a good part of her childhood travelling and living for long periods of time abroad. According to author and friend Alina Fernández in a long interview that she published in her book Una hoja de lechuga, "“ Due to the circumstances of her parents early divorce, Ruth traveled from one place to another like a migratory bird. She lived with her grandparents and her mother for long periods of time. Her Jewish grandfather was her best friend and accomplice, her teacher. And suddenly she found herself with her father, who had such a different life in such different countries. Her grandfather introduced her to music and literature. She was immersed in studies, dance. In Europe she had a happy child's life, although lived in an adult´s world ”." In 1990 she moved to New York to enroll at NYU and study Media, Culture and Communications, while alternating her collaborations as a correspondent for Interfilms and El Mundo magazine, but she left and decided to devote fully to her work, settling her residence between this city and Madrid until 1997.

In 1998 she moved to Tokyo, where she continued writing for different media while beginning her literary and artistic career.

In 1999 she publicly acknowledged that she suffers from anorexia and chronic depression since she was 11 years old.

Career
Correspondent and freelance journalist since the age of 17, she has spent much of her career in the United States. She has written in various media such as Cosmopolitan, GQ, Interviú, Cambio 16, El Semanal, El Correo, Cinemanía, Zero or Primera Línea, specializing in the genre of the interview, contributing to it an own literary style, far from conventions, closer to written conversation than to mere questions and answers, which she exercised particularly in the Sunday and cultural supplements of El Mundo daily newspaper -Magazine, La Esfera, Metrópoli, 7 Días, Crónica and La Revista- between 1990 and 1998. Personalities such as Anjelica Huston, Iggy Pop, Bruce Willis, Kathy Bates, Slash and K.D. Lang stands up among many others.

Between 1994 and 2003, she achieved some very renowned successes, such as her interviews with the elusive French actor Gérard Depardieu for Cinemanía; the eccentric Dennis Rodman for the Spanish edition of GQ in the April-May 1997 issue, which dared to publish the controversial cover of the former NBA player posing with the model and actress Rebecca Romijn, which was censored in the US by be considered dangerous, both for its erotic content and for its racial component; and Ivanka Trump, this being her first and only interview for a European media when she was only 15 years old, for the Sunday supplement El Semanal, of which she was on the cover as well as the subject of an extensive posing fashion that was published on September 21, 1997 under the title Ivanka Trump or how to succeed at 15 years old. Ruth Baza wrote prophetically at the end of the story «Ivanka Trump does not lack anything to become the new Princess of America. "Nor physical appearance, nor personality, nor money."

In El Correo newspaper, in addition to writing an opinion column, she published interviews with the likes of Yoko Ono and Candida Royalle.

Throughout her career, she has written hundreds of stories of social significance (analysis of the rise of youth fascism in these last two decades; progressivism, traumas and demands of women in the 21st century or queer empowering), as well as on topics related to counterculture, American society and culture, 20th century art and architecture.

She was radio talk show host on the programs En el Calor de la Noche on Radio Minuto and Caliente y Frío on Onda Cero during 1999 and 2000. Between 1999 and 2002, her weekly collaboration stands out on the morning program Día a la vista on Ràdio 4 (RNE), presented by Jordi González, with a section dedicated to Culture..

Photography
A self-taught photographer, she began photographing professionally in 1990 for many of the media outlets she wrote for, so that the images formed part of her articles and interviews. She made deep and expressive portraits of personalities from around the world, showing the most human, attractive and even vulnerable side of them.

But it is her work as a music photographer that stands out the most in her career. Behind the lens, she has captured bands and artists including Blur, Adam Ant, Sex Pistols, Willy DeVille, Paul McCartney, Roman Polanski, Lemmy, Nirvana, Tori Amos, Björk and Hundertwasser.

Between July and September 2023 she was part of the group exhibition From Her To Eternity: The Women Who Photograph Music created and curated by Courtney Love in Chicago's Wabash Arts Corridor along with the best women photographers in the world dedicated to music, among whom find Linda McCartney, Laura Levine, Sheila Rock, Katarina Benzova and Naomi Petersen 23​ 24​ 25

In September 2023 she presented Art in the Sky, at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. An exhibition of unpublished images of the great musical icons of the 90s.

Affaire Gérard Depardieu
On December 19, 2023, in the midst of the "Affaire Depardieu", the newspaper La Vanguardia published an extensive report detailing that she had been raped on October 12, 1995 by Gérard Depardieu in Paris, when she was 23 years and suffering anorexia, after interviewing the actor at the facilities of now defunct production company Roissy Films, for Cinemanía magazine.

She filed a complaint against him on December 14 in Malaga. The author explains that this act remained hidden in her memory until, after reading in April 2023 the investigative report published by Marine Turchi in the French investigative digital newspaper Mediapart, about the revelations of alleged sexual abuse of 13 women in France, the news shocked her so much that caused “an internal trigger” that led her to discover in her personal diary from 1995, the description of the assault on 9 pages. When rereading these personal notes, she relates that she remembered this traumatic event that her memory had blocked.

In statements to the EFE Agency, Javier Angulo, the then director of 'Cinemanía', stated that Baza told him upon returning from Paris that the interview had been "very unpleasant," and that the actor had even thrown a motorcycle helmet at her head. She “came traumatized”.

Her complaint is added to the two filed in Paris for alleged sexual abuse and rape. Paris prosecutors are also investigating the apparent suicide in early December 2023 of actress Emmanuelle Debeve r, 60, who claimed to have been sexually assaulted decades ago by Depardieu.

More References

 * Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España
 * Biblioteca de Mujeres Catálogo de Escritoras en lengua castellana  ïndice General de Autoras, Seudónimos y Referencias
 * Cabrera, Elena. Las cosas que nunca nos han contado
 * Evophat: The Carrot 58 Visions
 * Popular 1 Archivos. Vol. 1 (2021). P1 Books / B&J Editores. p. 346 a 361. DL B 11511-2021
 * Evophat: The Carrot 58 Visions
 * Popular 1 Archivos. Vol. 1 (2021). P1 Books / B&J Editores. p. 346 a 361. DL B 11511-2021
 * Evophat: The Carrot 58 Visions
 * Popular 1 Archivos. Vol. 1 (2021). P1 Books / B&J Editores. p. 346 a 361. DL B 11511-2021
 * Popular 1 Archivos. Vol. 1 (2021). P1 Books / B&J Editores. p. 346 a 361. DL B 11511-2021
 * Popular 1 Archivos. Vol. 1 (2021). P1 Books / B&J Editores. p. 346 a 361. DL B 11511-2021
 * Popular 1 Archivos. Vol. 1 (2021). P1 Books / B&J Editores. p. 346 a 361. DL B 11511-2021