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PhotoEspaña, Spain’s leading photography festival, took place official opening in Madrid this month and by September about 100 exhibitions will have shown the works of more than 300 artists in the capital and the rest of the country. Loosely linked under the theme of reimagining, these exhibitions feature works by well-known figures in Spanish and international photography as well as well-known artists who are just emerging.
Mapfre Foundation has a comprehensive guide to the work of Mexican artist Alejandro Cartagena, including three pieces he produced depicting the effects and meaning of the US-Mexico border: The Invisible Line, Between the Borders and Los Americanos.
Regarding the border wall he said: “It is strong, it always shows its strength.” Everywhere you look, there are these curved lines or these big concrete walls that are cutting and showing that we are different.
The consequences of separation can be very painful. “One of the most interesting or interesting things about this situation is how the border, the wall, dissolves the idea of humanity and humanity,” says Cartagena.
“And I repeat the same thought. Who am I? Who are the people who live around me? Who are we as Mexicans? Who are we as Americans? And the body of this wall removes us and we become generic, we become nobody.”
Seven large paintings of Laia Abril are placed in an intimate exhibition at Museum of Romanticism assessing the debilitating effects of endometriosis. His subjects, six women and a trans man, were photographed in the situations they adopt to overcome their pain.
“The idea was to foresee real growth”, he says. “Their bodies during the pain, and they were showing us the different stages they take when trying to get rid of the pain.” Abril’s photographs are taken from above about the out-of-body experiences she endures while dealing with her pain.
The triptych presentation is another nod to the physical effects of the culture. “It’s a battle between our body to help us stay healthy and deal with pain, and our body needs to be connected because it’s going through a lot of pain.”
Lux and Umbrapreview of the work of the Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen at the Fernán Gómez site, explores a work characterized by the instability of eclecticism. A childhood in Kenya and an interest in fashion design and a history associated with surrealism both inform a visual language that defies simple categories.
If certain themes, including death, sex and funerals, are repeated, they do so with vagueness. Even the umbrella, or shadow, of the theme of the show has different meanings, which are seen in his work as imaginary or representational, artificial or natural, real or symbolic.
Polish artist Rafal Milach’s strident exhibition at Circle of Fine Arts it explores the disruptions that occur in art that tend to transcend past norms of spectatorship.
Promising that “protest photography is boring, it always looks the same”, Milach directs his efforts to make the work accessible to new people through Archive of Public Protestsa platform for his and others’ photos of political and political conflicts in Poland and Eastern Europe. Posters, murals and free newspapers are on display, promoted as ways to strengthen networks of solidarity and encourage dissent.
PhotoEspaña takes its title Rethinkingthe diverse group presents 13 projects realized by artists exploring different methods of their studies and methods.
Among them, Txema Salvans takes a keen look at street life, which is no longer a sign of development and growth, in his series Wreckage of a Catastrophe.
Jon Gorospe’s The Grid uses video and audio to visualize how they move and how they move. Aleix Plademunt presents more than 120 black and white photographs to evoke colonialism and his focus on rubber trees in the Peruvian jungle.
And Eduardo Nave, describing his Espacio Disponible series as “the opposite of Times Square,” paints empty and rusty billboards that announce their demise and the transition to the digital age.
Two shows pay homage to canonical photo books, one from the 1980s, the other from the fifties: Richard Avedon. In the American West, 1979-1984 at Fundación Mapfre, and Robert Frank and the Americans and Espacio Fundación Telefónica.
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From top left: Ronald Fischer, beekeeper, Davis, California, 9 May 1981; Sandra Bennett, age 12, Rocky Ford, Colorado, 23 August 1980; David Beason, shipping clerk, Denver, Colorado, July 25 1981; Petra Alvarado, factory worker, on her birthday, El Paso, Texas, 22 April 1982. Photo: Richard Avedon/The Richard Avedon Foundation
Avedon traveled with a group of assistants, a big camera and a backdrop. It can take two days – in the case of beekeeper Ronald Fischer – to complete a painting. Frank used to arrive unexpectedly, Leica 35mm in hand, work quickly and carry on.
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Funeral, St Helena, South Carolina, from America. Photo: Robert Frank
Apart from the differences, some similarities remain: both projects achieved their full form in the literature, and both have been recognized as exemplary. Not least, and central to their enduring importance, is that both artists bore witness to an American reality that no amount of rhetoric—of the Cold War fifties or the Reaganite eighties—could hide.
Guy Lane went to Madrid as a guest of PhotoEspaña
