Despite what its name indicates, cosplay (contraction of costume, costume, and play, play) is much more than a costume game. Cosplayers, a global community that appears at movie premieres, conventions or manga salons, use costumes and accessories to represent their favorite fictional characters. They not only dress up but try to become them, imitate their gestures and poses, and in most cases invest large amounts of time and money in sewing their costumes and 3D printing their accessories.
Cosplay Heroes: from phenomenon to photography, FotoNostrum’s new exhibition, approaches their world through 118 photographs that Susan Onysko has taken at 43 conventions, mainly in the United States. Onysko was introduced to the cosplay community through her daughters. She was surprised that those people who put so much dedication (and large sums of money) into her creations only had a few photos taken with their mobile phones. So for years she has been offering them a model/rock star experience, with free, high quality photo sessions.
The exhibition also has comics and first editions on loan from the Museum of Comics and Illustration of Sant Cugat and various costumes on loan from the cosplayers themselves.
