Our collaborator Jean-Jacques Ader followed the Cadaqués photography festival which has just ended. He brought back these images and this text! JJN
Great turnout, in this rather cool month of October, for this eighth edition of the Catalan festival which ritually takes place in the village, relieved of its summer tourists.
Around forty photographers and creators are there again and making proposals that are as much documentary as experimental, aesthetic or research, coloring and collages.
Residency report for Joan Fontcuberta and Laia Abril (photo award 2016 in Arles), both drawing inspiration from a batch of anonymous Polaroids. The Barcelona photographer blended into the surreal world of places and landscapes, mixing naked bodies, rocks and shells. His compatriot, for her part, chose experimentation: photographing the shadows projected by Gala Dalí’s private objects – for the photos shown at the Galeria Cadaqués. She then entrusted the reconstruction of these ghostly silhouettes to an artificial intelligence – for the exhibition in the Casa Dalí garden in Port Lligat -, giving poetic images, which dialogue with each other and evoke the world of illusion and mystery.
Restitution of work also for Paul Cupido, whose work revolves around universal philosophical concepts such as impermanence. He seems to be partial to this land along the Mediterranean coast, declaring his love for the elements that compose it. His contemplative images remind us of our presence within nature itself. Anna Muller, visual artist who offers a new reality to existing images, reports on her investigations in the surrealist and heritage archives of Cadaqués. Dalí and Gala, truths and fictions, she offers us original and elegant collages, imbued with dreaminess and evoking local legends linked to the Catalan painter and the atmosphere of the place, to the point of disturbing our capacity for perception.
Occupying the floor of the Societat Amistat, Martin Parr and his ironic gaze rub shoulders with the snapshots of Lee Shulman’s Anonymous project with astonishing complicity. Few people would be able to distinguish these scenes of middle-class life from the 50s to the 80s from the photographs of the famous British photographer… The border separating the images of anonymous amateurs from the professional is even difficult to see. We must undoubtedly look at the initial intention, the shooting, and the distribution reserved to these batches of photographs. Also noted: Lee-Ann Olwage’s portraits of schoolgirls and schoolboys from South Africa, dancing in their class or posing in front of the camera, the flowers adorning certain images evoking escape and the desire for emancipation. The Lebanese artist and director Rima Samman presents a series taken from her book “L’amour se portaround du cou” (Filigranes 2021) in the form of portraits of members of her family, which the hand coloring transforms into vivid and colorful memory.
Extensive installations and displays, no less than four resident artists this year, welcoming cocktails and festive evenings for the lucky festival pass holders; InCadaqués seems to find a promising new momentum for the future.
Jean-Jacques Ader
InCadaqués photo festival, from October 3 to 13, 2024 in Cadaqués (Catalonia/ESP)
Information: www.incadaques.com
