The PhotoEspaña festival celebrates 25 editions. And it does so with 70 exhibitions in Madrid from this Wednesday until August 28. And extending beyond the capital of Spain to Cuenca, Santander, Valladolid and Zaragoza. There will be 70 samples that will bring together a good handful of great names in photography, starting with Sebastiao Salgado, Alberto García-Alix, Tina Modotti, Francesc Català Roca or Paolo Gasparini...
There will be images charged with history, politics and commitment that will illuminate the utopias of the 20th century, but also images that restore dignity to those portrayed in poor neighborhoods in Latin America or Almería and also photographs of the overwhelming beauty of the last virgin landscapes. And about those who dedicate their lives to the protection of animals. The history of documentary photography will have a great exhibition by Vicent Todolí and Sandra Guimarães and the festival will present its Honor Award posthumously to Ouka Leele in an act in which his daughter and sister, also a photographer Patricia, will be present. Allende.
There are only 12 photographs by the Brazilian Sebastião Salgado - plus 67 historical copies belonging to the Royal Collections that address how to approach landscapes from different perspectives - but they are 12 black and white images that cause an impact. Portraits of islands in Madagascar populated by fascinating baobabs, the Rio Negro, in the middle of the Amazon, reflecting the sky, the Angel Falls of Venezuela, a challenging Antarctic iceberg or the gnarled roots, almost converted into raging waves, of the pines of the White Mountains in California. Nature in all its splendor, far from direct human intervention. Royal Palace. From May 31 to September 4. Admission: 5 euros.
Dignity, utopia and humor come together in the work of Paolo Gasparini (Gorizia, 1934), an Italian by origin who emigrated to Caracas in 1964. The Mapfre Foundation brings together more than 300 works to trace his career, which is the living history of Latin America, from Venezuela to Cuba, Peru or Mexico, but also that of his native Europe. Gasparini brings together extremely powerful images in which he systematically restores dignity to his subjects in the humble neighborhoods of the American continent, but also portrays urban life, its riches and miseries, on both sides of the pond, with special interest in the signs that crowd the cities, from graffiti to advertising or signs of all kinds, as if they were marked on their skin. Essential. Mapfre Foundation. From June 1 to August 28. Admission: 5 euros, together with the Pérez Siquier exhibition (free on non-holiday Mondays from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.)
One of the greats of 20th century photography, the Italian Tina Modotti (Udine, 1896-Mexico City, 1942), takes over the Cerralbo Museum with 120 images that show her search for beauty and social justice. She emigrated to the United States, was a model, actress in Hollywood, revolutionary, political refugee and in love with Mexico, where she was a friend of Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera -she posed for the murals of the Chapel of Chapingo- and developed her photographic work between 1923 and 1930, a fusion of the Mexican revolution and avant-garde aesthetics. Cerralbo Museum. Until July 31. Admission: 3 euros
Alberto García-Alix, icon of the movida, National Photography Award for a powerful career, intervenes with his images in the works of the Prado Museum. The result of four years of work, he uses analog photography and double exposures, superimposes images, focuses and blurs and takes Goya to repaint his half-buried dog or Velázquez to remake Las Meninas, the museum's Gioconda watches under a terrorist stain of white paint and he portrays himself with a beast mask. Botanical Garden. From June 1 to August 28. Admission: 6 euros
The Círculo de Bellas Artes and the Casa de América show photographs by Robert Frank, Cartier-Bresson, Susan Meiselas, Humberto Rivas, Edward Ruscha and Bernd
Margaret Michaelis and Kati Horna put their cameras at the service of the Social Revolution promoted by the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists of the CNT-FAI during the Spanish Civil War. Against the theories that his photographs of the war fell into Francoist hands or disappeared among the ruins of the bombings, the archive of the Foreign Propaganda Offices of the CNT-FAI at the end of the war managed to safeguard its collections by sending them to the International Institute of History Social in Amsterdam, where they remained almost invisible until 2016. Now their work arrives in Madrid and will later travel to the Diputación de Huesca and La Virreina in Barcelona. National Intaglio. Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. From June 3 to July 24. Free entrance
PhotoEspaña celebrates the centenary of the birth of one of the great figures of contemporary Spanish photography, Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, 1922 – Barcelona, 1998). He opted in the postwar period for a documentary humanist photography that reflected the reality that surrounded him above any artistic experimentation. A personal style in which he dominates light and chiaroscuro and shows great empathy for what he photographs. El Águila Hall of the Community of Madrid. Until September 18. Free entrance
Along with the Paolo Gasparini exhibition, the Fundación Mapfre is also exhibiting another major retrospective dedicated to one of the great names of modernity in Spanish photography, who disappeared last year: Carlos Pérez Siquier. The exhibition covers his most emblematic series, which started in the neorealism of the La Chanca neighborhood in Almería, with its whitewashed walls, its unexpected geometries and, above all, the commitment to show the dignity of its inhabitants, as if they were speaking. Later he would be a pioneer of color photography and with his attentive gaze he approached both abstraction and the social changes of a Spain that embraced mass tourism, which he portrayed like no one else. Mapfre Foundation. From June 1 to August 28. Admission: 5 euros together with the Gasparini exhibition (free on non-holiday Mondays from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.)
The photographer Ana Palacios immerses herself in the daily life of those who dedicate their lives to the rescue, protection and care of animals. She explores life in animal sanctuaries, where she protects herself and cares for animals rescued, mostly from the factory farming industry. Some places where there is a new proposal for the relationship between humans and nature. An exhibition that raises awareness about the impact that industrial farming has on the degradation of the planet. Circle of Fine Arts. From June 1 to September 4. Admission: 5 euros
The Catalan photographer intends, through images taken in recent years in various countries around the world, and starting from a scientific basis, to review, explore and draw new conclusions about our species, our relationships, our actions and our environment. An ambitious work that shows how the sophisticated combination of matter has given rise to today's complex structures. Canal de Isabel II room. From May 13 to July 24. Free entrance
