Den internationale fotofestival PHotoESPAÑA fylder i øjeblikket museer, kulturcentre og gallerier i Madrid. Fotograf Christian Grønne tager dig, i billeder og ord, med rundt til nogle af festivalens højdepunkter. Du får også et lille kig bag kulisserne.
Life is hard, life is beautiful! For some of us the possibilities are endless, and for others they are infinitely limited. This year’s PHotoESPAÑA 2018 features all facets of human life.
This year, as the festival celebrates its 20th anniversary, the theme is Players. A series of Carte Blanche exhibitions, curated by Spanish photographer Cristina de Middel, focuses on photography’s more playful approach to the world. However, the big festival and colourful festival, with 90 exhibitions, also gets around to the more serious sides of life.
An African odyssey
At Centro Cultural De La Villa, I meet this year’s winner of the PHotoESPAÑA award 2018, Samuel Fosso, and his self-staged images. Life as a Biafran refugee in Nigeria became his artistic destiny. At 13, he made portraits of himself. He then sent them home to his grandmother when his parents were killed during the war. In the beginning, he was primarily interested in image images, i.e. fashion and style. Later, more cultural and political statements appeared in his photographs. Striking images that in a way contain a lot of humour, and at the same time in Fosso’s choice of subject are grave. The exhibition is part of the Players exhibitions.
Place: Fernán Gómez, Centro Cultural De La Villa
The exhibition is open until 29 July 2018
The elegant Senegal
Another Africa I find in the cultural center, Circulo de Bella Artes. Posing for photographers from several eras, the woman shows the elegance of the first half of the 20th century – and what radiance. Definitely an exhibition worth seeing.
Place: Circulo de Bellas Artes
The exhibition is open until 26 August 2018
Free play
A giant wallpaper with a reclining female body fills an entire wall. On her body are placed jelly-like, waterman-like objects.
Six photographers from the five continents challenge natural laws and customs in the Grand World Final exhibition. They are creatively trying to take control of all the edicts we have to live with in this world of such small size and so many obligations.
The Female Body is the work of photographers Prue Stent and Honey Long, who play with convention, turning things on their head, creating new ways of looking at and experiencing the beauty of the female body in their series Oceania.
Photographer Miguel Calderón mixes political, social and satirical subjects in a series of photographs of people with books on their heads. It is mainly the titles of the books that have guided the choice of the photographer’s subjects.
Place:
Fernán Gómez, Centro Cultural De La Villa
The exhibition is open until 29 July 2018
Start at the beginning …
Start at the beginning and walk until you reach the end: stop so is the title of another of Cristina de Middels Carte Blanche exhibitions. Things are bubbling and blooming at the Alice in Wonderland-inspired exhibition. Here you’ll find a rotating photo house, filled with everything from cleaning supplies to surreal wallpaper.
The exhibition also features a very moving video installation with six sign language interpreters, in six different countries’ languages, including Danish, making sign language to the pop song Silent Running. The artist has reversed the roles so that we, the audience, translate the music into signs.
Place: CentroCentro Cibeles
The exhibition is open until 16 September 2018
Legendary Magnum photographers
In Madrid’s iconic Télefonica building we find another exhibition in the Players series. Over 40 Magnum photographers show in 200 photos that it’s possible to create visual play and fun images, even if the seriousness lurks just below the surface.
Photo: Christian Grønne
The exhibition also features Danish photographer Jacob Aue Sobol and his highly contrasting and sensuous images.
Place: Espacio Fundación Telefónica
The exhibition is open until 16 September 2018
The sustainable
PHotoESPAÑA’s opening exhibition was held in the Botanical Gardens, packed with prominent guests who surged through the rooms like a manic stream as the curator presented each photo.
The exhibition is about sustainability under the motto: “Without sustainability there will be no development, nor a future”. Here you will find poetic images by the Korean Boomoon and darkened cities by Thierry Cohen.
Place: El Jardín Botanico
The exhibition is open until 26 August 2018
Photo: Christian Grønne
The contrasting world
Contrasts come together in a big way at this year’s edition of the photo festival.
I go outside Madrid to Segovia’s former prison and encounter the harsh, conflict-ridden reality of much of the world in a series of images created by New York Times photographers
Photo: Christian Grønne
Place: La Cárcel – Segovia
New York Times exhibition on view until 29 July 2018
Back in Madrid, I visit the fashionable neighbourhood of Salamanca, where photographer Mária Svarbová’s “Swimming Pool” pictures hang in the fashion store DELPOZO and have inspired the designer for the store’s latest collection.
Place: DELPOZO
The swimming pool exhibition is open until 26 August 2018
Found objects
Spanish photographer Carmen Calvo has spent a long time finding photographs and objects at flea markets, which she combines to create something surprising. The result we see in the exhibition Repose & Dizziness, and it gives the photograph a secondary meaning. Nevertheless, it creates very powerful images with simple means.
Place: Museo Cerralbo
The exhibition is open until 16 September 2018
Young photographers: life in Cuba
At Casa de América, I’m welcomed by a series of dark images by Cuban photographer Musuk Nolte, who won the 2017 Elliott Erwitt Havana Clup 7 award. There are almost no grey tones in the photographs, and many of them appear blurred and poorly copied.
On closer inspection, and after the inner technophile has had his say, the magic begins to happen. The brilliant, very measured light, the wildly detailed clouds, light incidence and fallout, hits me in the heart. Here, the photographs really radiate the heart behind them.
The exhibition is called Islands Shadow and shows life in Cuba in a poetic and unconventional way.
Young photographers: in the green
At Casa de América I also find pictures by Irina Raffo in an exhibition of contemporary photography from Uruguay. The images are a mishmash of colour and nature. The Argentinian Nursing Home, with its grandmother’s favorite sofa and a Dutch flower field as a backdrop, and a 21-year-old friend’s bed overlooking what appears to be a Canadian wilderness motif. Strangely and curiously composed surfaces and objects in space – for it is space that is at issue here. The camera as a recorder has needlessly juxtaposed all elements in the image, and all surfaces are given the same meaning.
The series is called “The Green Place” and is part of a group exhibition on contemporary photography from Uruguay.
Place: Casa de América
The exhibitions are open until 31 July 2018
The young photographers: promising Arab talent
At Casa Àrabe, I fell in love with Yoriya’s Yassine Alaoui’s colourful, whimsical and well-composed images. He is a very young and promising photographer, and the burk-clad woman, I could not stand. The photo is part of the exhibition Casablanca.
Place: Casa Àrabe
The exhibition is open until 23 September 2018
Photo books of the year
If you love photo books like I do, stop by the National Library for the best photo books of the year. You can browse through the original layouts, and there’s plenty of inspiration for both the photographer and the book fetishist.
Place: Biblioteca Nacional de España
The exhibition is open until 23 September 2018
Legend workshop
PHotoESPAÑA also organises a series of workshops where you can get new inspiration from renowned photographers. At the workshop with Cristina de Middel and Jason Fulford, I get to watch.
Fulford demonstrated that series can be made to have meaning and content in many other ways than, for example, the chronology of the family album. They can be sorted by shape, colour, pattern, object, colour match, emotion, etc. He’s worth a Google if you want to play with it.
At the Players by Samsung workshop with Christina de Middel, young photographers play with Samsung’s new tech gadgets in the play lab. Here they focus on photographing over the meadows: Who am I and who do I want to be. The result of the workshop can be seen in Madrid’s old tobacco factory, Tabacalera.
Place: Tabacalera
The exhibition is open until 9 September 2018
Cristina de Medel’s own photographs
PHotoESPAÑA also gives us a look at the big player of the year and curator of the Carte Blanche exhibitions Christina de Medel’s own works. At the gallery Juana De Aizputu I see the exhibition Milana del Toboso. The gallery is owned by an amazing redhead who has been in the business for over 50 years. Her charisma is so loving and warm, and she knows what she’s talking about.
Cristina de Medel’s exhibition is about Spanish identity, built around Spain’s ancient trade routes. She is certainly an interesting photographer and it is obvious why the Magnum agency currently has her in the shooting process.
Place: Galería Juana de Aizpuru
The exhibition is open until 27 July 2018
Practical info
All exhibitions are free, except the Círculo de Bellas Artes. You can get the programme at La Fábrica and in the bookshop FNAC.
Read more about PHotoESPAÑA
I and photographer Christian Grønne were invited to
PHotoESPAÑA by La Fábrica, the organisers of the festival and the Spanish Government Tourist Office in Denmark. The organisations had no influence on the content of the article.
Text, photos and videos: Christian Grønne
Read also my report from PhotoEspaña 2017.
