The hectic stone garden that is Cadaqués faces these first days of autumn as if summer could never end. Under a delirious sun, tourists are still here trapped by the often proclaimed charm of the easternmost town on the peninsula, now rubbing shoulders with the legion of collectors and artists who, in a very well-run haste, have been wallpapering the entire town with photographs.
They have taken over the walls of the casino. From Bar Boia and the theater. From the Gala corral and the Cristina hostel. From the hermitage of Sant Baldiri and all the galleries, streets and squares to even find your own exit to the sea. Because on those turquoise waters of Es Poal where bathers still travel determined not to miss a ray of sun in this endless summer, the German photographer Hernike Stahl has soaked an installation focused on memory. And a little further away, in Port Alguer, float the works of Henri Kisiliewski, Richard Pak and Mónica Figueras.
It has arrived, and it is now the seventh year, InCadaqués Photo Festival, an intimate but explosive occasion that invites whoever wants (or is around, they will have no choice) to immerse themselves in a photographic experience in which everything is ready (for its founders, Valmont Achalme, Fabienne Baradat and Olivia Seigneurgens) to turn collecting into an act of creation. The vernissages help (almost always by invitation) that allow the lucky ones (only those who get a VIP bracelet) to dine, have lunch or have a snack in the most impressive houses in the town with views of the Cap de Creus natural park that take away the hiccups and the evidence that today's hippies wear Cortana and Urban Zen. And YSL, Céline and Jacquemus.
Here you walk barefoot or in colored espadrilles. It is spoken in German, English and some Russian but above all French and it is lived in a positive way to be able to transit (levitate) through those 25 exhibitions that push photographers and collectors to meet among portfolios, engravings, books and original works of art.
Orderly chaotic queues form here and there. The delicate work of Toni Privat is applauded. The vintage prints of New Yorker Weegee. The successes of Frank Horvat in the field of fashion during the crazy 60s. And the sacred trees of Deidi Von Schaewen that with overflowing naturalness have taken possession of the Corral de Gala. And, of course, also to David Lynch whose surreal photographs are for a few days (this lasts until October 15) the owners and mistresses of the gardens of the House of Salvador Dalí.
For its vernissage (another strict VIP pass only) Portlligat beach was dressed on Friday with two tables packed with food in a Dalinian key. In front of her holding dozens, perhaps hundreds, of very white hard-boiled eggs, each resting on the silver of its own spoon, a high-ranking guest (collector) boasted of having smoked the most expensive joint in history. Dalí does not remember the year but he does remember the place (the Marítim) he signed the cigarette paper which then, of course, remained in smoke and nothing. Like the runs that others remembered (being very very children) through the gardens and rooms of the genius. “They all smelled different and Gala was always in all of them,” they said.
Black and white. Color. Polaroid. Dark camera. Cyanotype. Pinhole. They are all worlds that emerge from photography to build an immersive experience that Dalí would surely have enjoyed madly as well.
These days, the only thing missing is that he is one of the main protagonists: Seven original unpublished photographs of Salvador Dalí's Lost Portfolio have been hung on the first floor of the Casino Sala L'Amistat, which is presented in collaboration with the Pere Vehí fund. Made in 1931 by André Caillet, after having remained untraceable until 2011, they capture Dalí's works with extraordinary technical mastery.
It is there that Dalí's visionary role in all levels of art is confirmed, writing almost a hundred years ago that “photographic glass can caress the cold morbidities of white sinks; follow the sleepy slowness of aquariums; analyze the most subtle joints of electrical devices with all the unreal accuracy of magic. In painting, on the contrary, if you want to paint a jellyfish, it is absolutely necessary to represent a guitar or a harlequin playing the clarinet” (“La fotografia,pura creació de l'esperit”, L'Amic de les Arts, n° 18 , 09/30/1927).
