Spanish photography, however, moves

But I return to my argument, that if I don’t get tangled and mess them up. Although that’s what it’s about: ‘messing up’ the issue. More than 25 years ago, when PHotoEspaña was born, it did so in a context in which The photo was in good creative health but not so receptive. It therefore needed a festival (it was not the first. The Barcelona-based Primavera Fotofotografia did its good work) that brought the richness of this language to our country and made known some of its big names, some of whom were celebrating their first individual in Spain.

The fact is that it is the one who was the first director of the festival, the aforementioned Castellote (editions from 1998 to 2000), who returns to the contest, and to a space, the Círculo, which he also knows well, since he directed its photography area between 1985 and 1996, and premiering – coincidences of life – with Cristina García Rodero, the artist who now, one floor above, recovers her most iconic series ‘remastered’: ‘España Oculta’.

What happened happened

So we have an already assimilated discipline, photography; a consolidated festival, PHotoEspaña; and a returning curator who is asked precisely to review what has happened in Spanish photography in these 24 years in which he has not been linked to the contest. And there is no doubt that it changes, everything changes, and hence the motto of this edition, and Castellote’s need to narrow down such a broad topic as impossible to map, to be left with a tiny selection, if you think about it, of authors who have broken the seams of photography, expanded its limits.

And this is why, before entering the room, one comes across a sculptural Aitor Ortiz, or, as one passes through it, one cannot help but notice a Lola Guerrera or Jon Cazenave installations. Note that Marina Nunez It is not photographic, but videographic, digital and lighting.

The curator and director of the contest agree that the generation gathered here is the most creative and unprejudiced Of all those that our photographic History has given, the most formed, the one that has been able to work with references and the most numerous. Also one in which (in all fairness) the presence of women is much more notable. In the exhibition, also that of Basque names. Perhaps due to the presence of the Etxepare Basque Institute as a collaborator. Or precisely because of its presence.

We then enter, as Santoyo describes it, a garden of exotic species, «eccentric, climbers, capable of coexisting and feed each other without stealing light or sap. A “utopian collective that increasingly needs more space and less wall” to show its proposals (and that would lead us to the scaffolding system to save the assembly, which does not benefit everyone).

Artists of varied interests, which the curator groups together – or allows some to give way to others – who map the Spanish panorama: from the appropriate image of María Cañas, to the bets on past techniques (the magnificent chapel of Juanan Requena and Irene Zottola); the most narrative image of Bego Anton along with the documentary Álvaro Laiz or Mar Sáez; the archiving of Alfredo Cáliz…

The fragmented portrait of Germán Gómez. Miguel Ángel Tornero, like him, manipulating the paper. Anger Lombardy including political criticism. The abstraction of Combarro, by Alejandro Marote. Roberto Agirrezabala’s photobook… Welcome to this jungle. It is well worth getting lost in.