A profusion of images, emotions, sensations, PHotoEspana 2016 is intense and hectic, eclectic and insightful, unfolding across the city of Madrid whose cartography pulses with energy at every encounter. Decidedly European, the 19th edition of the festival showcases women photographers. Who are those trailblazers who were able to take charge of their own destinies and defy the social taboos of their time in order to express their way of seeing? And how does the current generation honor them by continuing their work?
The curatorial choices do a wonderful job of rediscovering and representing the careers of women artists.
Let’s pause to contemplate these extraordinary lives which once again challenge the notions of identity and gender and express a tireless quest for “a room of one’s own,” for emancipation and possible recognition.
Lucia Moholy at the Loewe Foundation
Even as the Guggenheim Museum is featuring the first major retrospective of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, his wife Lucia seems to have been forgotten by the history of Bauhaus. Born in Prague in 1894, she was a writer, art critic, and editor. At the request of Walter Gropius, Lucia contributed to the production of 14 books about the activities of the Bauhaus school and its famous workshops from the moment she arrived in Dessau. Using an 18×24 camera and natural light, she photographed interiors as well as some of her husband’s and his classmates’ prototypes. In 1928, she and her husband traveled to Berlin to take over the school of photography founded by Johannes Itten. When Bauhaus shut its doors in 1933, she was forced to flee Germany for London, leaving behind all her negatives. She moved to Zurich in 1959 and tried to recover her scattered collection. She died in 1989 without ever receiving any form of recognition. This exhibition intends to acknowledge her influence on the history of the avant-gardes and restore her rightful place with a display of some 48 images from the Bauhaus archives and Fotostiftung Schweiz.
Lucia Moholy, cien anos después
Curator : Maria Millan
Loewe Fundacion
Calle de Serrano, 34
28001 Madrid, Espagne
http://www.loewe.com/eu_es/fundacion-loewe/
Shirley Baker at Museo Cerralbo
Recognized as a pioneer in street photography in post-war England, Shirley Baker (1932–2014) received little acknowledgement during her lifetime.
Self-taught, she was given her first camera at the age of eleven. Between 1961 and 1981, she focused on the disintegrating industrial cities of Salford and Manchester. Middle class populations had been expelled from city centers by extensive urbanization and forced to invent new ways of survival and resistance. While men are conspicuously absent in the photographs, women are in the foreground, with their children who, with joy and innocence, are absorbed in games of their own invention, despite all the noise and dust.
Shirley Baker : Women and children ; and Loitering Men
Curator : Anna Douglas
Museo Cerralbo
Calle de Ventura Rodríguez, 17
28008 Madrid, Espagne
http://www.mecd.gob.es
Juana Biarnes and Cristina de Middel at the Centro Cultural de la Villa
A dialog between two key figures in photography! Juana Biarnes is the first Spanish woman journalist while Cristina de Middel is one of the discoveries of PHotoEspana 2009. A former journalist, de Middel examines the truth and power of fiction. She has enjoyed international recognition since the publication of her book Afronauts (about a short-lived Zambian space program in the 1960s, which she has reimagined).
A vast panorama of Cristina de Middel’s work, including some 300 photographs and major series such as This Is What Hatred Did, Party, Jan Mayen, Snap Fingers and Whistle, maps an emerging constellation and presents her persistent effort to perceive the underside of world events, the unsaid, and the intentional or unwitting falsehoods of the photographic process.
Juana Biarnes, A contre courant
Cristina de Middel, Muchissimo
Centro Cutural de la Villa, teatro Fernan Gomez
Calle de Génova, 4
28001 Madrid, Espagne
http://teatrofernangomez.esmadrid.com/
The Danube Revisited, a chick road trip!
The festival would be incomplete without the wonderful project In the Footsteps of Inge Morath, involving eight international winners of the Inge Morath Award retracing Morath’s itinerary along the Danube River.
Twelve women, three women, two babies, one child, one truck, and four cars, a 4,066 mile journey, 80 hours on the road across eight countries and 19 cities over a total of 34 days: these are the mile markers in this challenging human adventure! Using Inge Morath’s diary as a guide, each photographer experienced and recorded her own impressions, fantasies, and visions of a region as mysterious and inspiring as its inhabitants.
In the footsteps of Inge Morath. Gazes on the Danube
Espacio Fundación Telefonica
Calle de Fuencarral, 3
28004 Madrid, Espagne
https://espacio.fundaciontelefonica.com
FESTIVAL
PHotoEspaña 2016
Festival international de la photographie et des arts visuels
Madrid, Espagne
http://www.phe.es
