PhotoEspaña 2017 Festival

The arrival of summer also marks the start of the 20th edition of the PhotoEspaña Festival. This international event is one of the most important platforms in Madrid for contemporary visual arts and photography. From May 31 to August 27, the event brings together artists represented by different institutions, expanding beyond the Spanish capital. Bilbao, Barcelona, and Tenerife will host exhibitions to mark the 20th anniversary of the project. Beyond the borders of Spain, other proposals will also be presented in cities around the globe, including: Buenos Aires, where the Fototeca Latinoamericana will show the photographic exhibition titled "The Place of No Return" by Spanish photographer Alberto García-Alix; Beijing, where the group exhibition titled "Photo Beijing 2017" will be presented at the China Millennium Monument; Chicago, with the exhibition titled "#AiWeiwei" by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; and, Berlin, with the show titled "Undressed" by London-based Peruvian photographer Mario Testino at the Helmut Newton Foundation; among others. The official section offers suggestive projects, many of which reflect the enormous contributions to contemporary photography made by Latin American artists. Casa de América, for instance, presents the group exhibition "Confluences: Ten Years of Trasatlántica," featuring some of the works selected in recent years by Trasatlántica, an initiative aimed at showcasing the work of Latin American artists, supported by the Spanish Cooperation Agency for International Development (AECID). Casa América will also present the show titled "Amazonian Stories" by Brazilian photographer Rafael Milani. Of a somehow more technical nature, the exhibition "One Hundred Years of Leica Photography" at Fundación Telefónica explores the creative possibilities of one of the most emblematic cameras in the history of photography. Some spaces already traditional within the festival continue to be present, like El Real Jardín Botánico, which for this edition features the emblematic photographs centered on Cuba by US photographer Elliott Erwitt. Other institutions participate with a variety of exhibition proposals, including: the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, with "#Thyssen25: A Photographic Chronicle," the Museo Nacional del Prado, with "Farideih Lashai: When I Count, There Are Only You…But When I Look, There Is Only a Shadow;" the Museo Cerralbo, with "Carlos Saura. Spain, 1950s;" and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, with the group exhibition organized by the Banca March International Photography Prize; among others. The most heterodox section is presented by Alberto García-Alix. Through the Carta Blanca program, the photographer has selected six photographers whose production is characterized by their departure from the more traditional cannons. In this manner, "The Exaltation of Being. A Heterodox Gaze," brings together works by artists Anders Petersen, Teresa Margolles, Paulo Nozolino, Pierre Molinier, Antoine D'agata, and Karlheinz Weinberger, shown in spaces like the CentroCentro Cibeles, the Círculo de Bellas Artes, and the Museo del Romanticismo, among other cultural institutions. With that same spirit of experimentation with the possibilities of the photographic medium, Tabacalera Promoción de Arte will offer a laboratory for photographic creation and edition directed by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, in addition to offering to the general public several encounters with professionals and workshops. Galleries participating in the Off Section include: the Galería Juana de Aizpuru (with Alberto-García-Alix), Casa Sin Fin (with Alejandro S. Garrido), the Galerí...