Nos preocupa el uso inapropiado de la foto.

Photospaña 2025 will celebrate its 27th edition between April 30 and September 14 with a strong commitment to decolonization, female talent – 48% of the artists are women, historical memory, and artificial intelligence. This edition will carry the slogan ‘After all’ and will pay tribute to the legacy of Helga de Alvear, a gallery owner who passed away on February 2.

«We are concerned about the poor photo used, we are concerned about artificial intelligence, and we are concerned about the active fires surrounding us. But I believe we can continue to trust in the power of photography as an agent of change,» said Photospaña director María Santoyo at the presentation of the 27th edition at the Círculo de Bellas Artes.

The event will feature a total of 103 exhibitions that can be seen in eight Spanish cities with the participation of 360 visual artists. It is worth noting that 59% of the artists will be Spanish, and 48% will be women.

«After all» is the title of a collective exhibition that will pay homage to the legacy of Helga de Alvear and can be visited at the Belgian cultural space. The exhibition, with funds from her collection, traces a century of transformation of the European landscape through architecture and photography, from Eugène Atge to the Düsseldorf school.

«This edition highlights photography as a conscious medium of context and presence. A reflection on the image as a witness and instrument against the great contemporary challenges. From historical memory to climate justice or new identities, the festival affirms the critical and transformative power of photography in a time marked by uncertainty,» emphasized the organization.

Another highlight this year is the inclusion of the guest country, which in this case is Chile. Through exhibitions of Lotty Rosenfeld, Julia Toro, Michael Mauney, and Martin Gusinde, the event will address political dissidence, visual memory, and ancestral cultures in the archive, testimony, and resistance.

The presence of the Prado Museum and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is also being reinstated. The Prado Museum will present «Essential Power,» a collaborative work with women in the Jerte Valley that reflects on identity, territory, and the representation of an ecofeminist perspective.

On the other hand, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum will organize a unique exhibition by Isabel Cixet, Limpie de Diego Estrella, who connects her cinematic universe with the tradition of avant-garde.

Among the news is the addition of the National Museum of Anthropology, which is included for the first time in the official section within the 150th anniversary. They will present «Nosce Te ipsum: Member Ghost» by Ayana V. Jackson, who «raises the colonial origin to restart the lost past of those who have been victims of hegemonic abuse, history,» as explained by Santoyo.

This exhibition, according to the Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí, allows for a deeper understanding of the «hottest colonial past.» «Contemporary art allows a recitation of those photos that allow us to challenge today what is happening to a percentage of citizens who come from other places and grow,» he added.

Moreover, the National Museum of Romanticism will host «Adelaida» by Mercedes Hausmann and Jorge Salgado, a proposal that combines photographic archives, historical documents, and artificial intelligence to reconstruct the life of a dissident woman in Madrid at the end of the 19th century.

«The project reconstructs through artificial intelligence the daily inaccessible biography of Adelaida Martínez-Corera, a single woman from the end of the 19th century. It is the claim of a silent figure who challenged the gender and class rules of her time,» said the Photospaña director.

Also addressing democratic memory, Marisa Flórez and Rui Ochoa will play in two exhibitions that span five decades of political, social, and cultural history in Spain and Portugal from the transition to the present day.

From the poetic experimentation of Dora Maar to the performative critique of Miss Beige, Photospaña 2025 will present a rich selection of proposals that make visible the work of the artists or place their experience at the center of the visual discourse.

For instance, the exhibition «Photography and Drawings» by Dora Maar at the Lázaro Galiano Museum will reveal a lesser-known facet of the surrealist artist, focused on street photography and drawing as a form of poetic observation of the daily world. This exhibition provides a more intimate and comprehensive view of a key figure in 20th-century art history.

Meanwhile, at the Cerralbo Museum, «You Must Know How to Be» will celebrate the ten years of Miss Beige, an alter ego of Ana Esiteh. With her disposition and unique language, Miss Beige presents herself as an atypical hero, resisting beauty stereotypes, self-exploration in social media, and the expensive gaze, supporting fantasy as a political tool.

Additionally, three prominent photographers will share their vision at the Casa de México Foundation in Spain. «When Light Speaks» by Graciela Iturbide brings together some of her most iconic images where symbols, femininity, and ancestry intertwine in a universe of haunting beauty. Lourdes Grobet’s «The Laboratory of Rural and Indigenous Theater» is a photographic tour of one of the country’s most unique and picturesque projects that has transformed theater into an identity and resistance tool for indigenous peoples.

Similarly, in «The Way to Tepeyac» by Alinka Echeverría, the artist and anthropologist represent pilgrims carrying images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, exploring the tension between the invisible and its material representation through sixty back portraits.

Regarding the exhibition «Generation 25» at the Ortega Marañón Foundation, it will establish an intergenerational dialogue between eleven contemporary photographers and the pioneering women of the Ladies’ Residence, the generation called «of the 25», claiming and inheriting from a creative and contemporary perspective.

Another significant collaboration of the photographic event will take place at the Teatro Real, where photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron will be collected for «A Midsummer Night’s Dream,» one of the works that Coliseo Madrid envisions in its new 25/26 season – a dialogue with the Shakespearean universe of sensitive reference and theatricality.

FUENTE