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| Photo by Miki Johnson |
| Click photo for more images from PHotoEspaña 2007. |
When is a gallery not just a gallery? How about when it is Madrid's gigantic Conde Duque cultural center built as an army barracks in the early 18th century and considered the apex of typical Madrileño architecture. Or when it is a 16th-century Baroque church in the historic Spanish town of Cuenca.
These and the other beautiful buildings appropriated by Madrid's PHotoEspaña photography festival set the mood for this year's 10th anniversary program, which ends officially July 22.
For the past nine years, Spain's largest photography festival has been run in three-year blocks by lead curators who choose specific themes for each year. The last director, Horacio Fernández, designated his term of 2004 through 2006 the years of History, Cities, and Nature.
But 2007's modus operandi seemed to be celebration itself: of the festival's decade birthday, of Spanish and international photography, and of the ever-growing list of exhibition locations. This year's biggest venue addition came in the form of an entire town, Cuenca, known for its stunning views and "hanging" cliff-side houses. Seven exhibitions were housed in five of Cuenca's re-appropriated spaces, from the museum-esque Fundación Antonio Pérez to the vaulted ceiling of Iglesia de la Merced.
In a European festival scene sometimes dominated by the French -- by Rencontres d'Arles and Visa pour l'Image in Perpignan in particular -- PHotoEspaña also is also eager to celebrate the influence of Latin photographers on the industry. Five European Gazes, a show bringing together five photographers of Latin and Spanish decent, speaks to this directly. Five curators were tapped to each bring in an emerging photographer, for a show that the festival organizers hope will continue in future years. This year's photographers were Pedro Alvárez, Matías Costa, Juan González, David Jiménez, and María Isabel Rueda.
Then of course there are several individual exhibitions by Hispanic photographers, including Sebastião Salgado's treatise on Africa, Lordes Grobet's project on Mexico's Lucha Libre wrestling league, and Ricky Dávila's beautiful, methodical portraits of the faces of the Iberian Peninsula.
One of the most interesting PHotoEspaña projects was native not only to Spain, but to Madrid specifically. In a gigantic brick building known as El Matadero, a group of local artists called NOPHOTO set up shop, not only turning the old slaughterhouse into a gallery space and cultural center, but also documenting the process of transmutation itself. The NOPHOTO show, conceived along the "three axes of past, present, and process," was presented in El Matadero's chilly, dark main room entered through hanging plastic panels reminiscent of its abattoir days. Historical images of the building mingle with documentary photographs of the rather beleaguered neighborhood El Matadero calls home, drawing attention to one of the reasons NOPHOTO has set up shop in a space so far from the rest of the festival. "We want to introduce people to an unknown area, and a new way of working," explained NOPHOTO artist Juan Valbuena.
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