The Foto Colectania Foundation presents the exhibition Based on True Stories. Foto Colectania Collection, thanks to the primary collaboration of the Banco Sabadell Foundation, curated and organized by Foto Colectania.
The exhibition takes as its starting point with the stories behind the photographs, those that are often not explained and that on this occasion take more prominence to show the viewer an intention that often goes unnoticed. The selected images, accompanied by new contextualizations and, sometimes, the author’s own testimony, aim to give new meanings and greater depth to the photographs.
The exhibition coincides with the launch of the collection’s new web platform, which has been created with the intention of including more documentary resources in the future, including information about the authors and their series, as well as new images from the Foto Colectania collection.
“It is always a big challange to make an exhibition of one’s own collection, and especially in our case, that gathers together more than 3,000 photographs,” explains Irene de Mendoza, artistic director of Foto Colectania and curator of the exhibition. And she adds: “For this exhibition, we have chosen to organize it in a way that it invites the viewer to discover new stories, whether of images they already know or photographs they see for the first time, and to complete them with other photographs that they will find on our website. The proposal is an invitation to look again, to delve into the images and discover new stories that are not usually the ones that appear in photography history books”.
Beginning 20 years ago, the Collection of Foto Colectania has become one of the most important photography collections in Spain. With more than 3,000 works by more than eighty Spanish and Portuguese photographers between 1950 and today, the collection is characterized by bringing together on most occasions a significant group of photographs of each of them, showing the trajectory of many of the authors represented.
‘Basado on True Stories. Foto Colectania Collection’
Composed of more than a hundred photographs, the images gathered together in the exhibition Based on True Stories are organized in a journey that runs through four open thematic areas. In the first, titled “Personal Album”, we find a series of photographs that show us the most intimate look of the authors to their closest environments and personal experiences.
The next section, “The Other Story of Photographs”, is the heart of the show. Here we find some of the icons of photography along with lesser-known works that, thanks to the texts that complement them, the situations, characters and places portrayed can add new meanings for the viewer.
In the third area of the exhibition, the “Real Landscapes” are contrasted with the “Imagined Landscapes”, and the limits of what is real and what is imagined, are consciously blurred.
In the last section of the exhibition, entitled “Constructed Stories”, the selected photographs share various processes of intervention by their authors: either by placing themselves as the subject of the composition, by building still lifes, manipulating and experimenting with the double exhibition or recreating stories.
For this show, the visitor, through a QR code and his mobile device, will be able to connect the exhibited photographs with new images and resources that are in the web page of the collection. This platform will grow over the coming months, in which more content related to the photographs, series and authors will be incorporated, with the aim of becoming a fundamental resource of contemporary photography in our country.
Authors present in the exhibition:
Helena Almeida, Manel Armengol, Pilar Aymerich, Catarina Botelho, Javier Campano, Carlos Cánovas, Vari Caramés, Gérard Castello-Lopes, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Toni Catany, Colita, Joan Colom, Gabriel Cualladó, Cristina de Middel, Jean Marie del Moral, Jordi Esteva, Manuel Ferrol, Joan Fontcuberta, Ferran Freixa, Alberto García-Alix, Cristina García Rodero, Francisco Gómez, Inês Gonçalves, Fernando Gordillo, Roger Guaus, Jorge Guerra, José Guerrero, Cristóbal Hara, Juande Jarillo, Manolo Laguillo, Fernando Lemos, Chema Madoz, Ramón Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Jorge Molder, Nicolas Muller, Isabel Muñoz, Rafael Navarro, Paulo Nozolino, Francisco Ontañón, César Ordoñez, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Aleix Plademunt, Leopoldo Pomés, Jorge Ribalta, Xavier Ribas, Humberto Rivas, Jorge Rueda, Txema Salvans, Gervasio Sánchez, Rafael Sanz Lobato, Luiz Simoes, Ton Sirera, Ricard Terré, Miguel Trillo, Juan Diego Valera, Virxilio Viéitez and Luis Vioque.
Basad on True Stories. Foto Colectania Collection
Jusqu’au 28 février 2021
Foto Colectania Foundation
Passeig Picasso 14
08003 Barcelona
