PhotoEspaña 2003
INDEX
3-Introduction
5-Festival´s structure
10-Exhibitions: Official Section
31-Exhibitions: Festival Off
35-Encounters PHotoEspaña
38-PHotoEspaña in The Streets
39-Parallel Activities
41-Official Awards
42-Digital Festival
44-Credits
PHOTOESPAÑA 2003
PHotoEspaña is an international photography festival that has been held in Madrid every year since 1998, making photography the protagonist of Spanish cultural life. About 500,000 people annually visit the approximately fifty exhibitions scheduled and remaining PHotoEspaña activities. The Festival celebrates its 6th edition this year and it will be held from 11 June to 13 July.
The exhibitions are scheduled in order to show the public, photography fans and experts, the latest trends in the world of photography and images. They are complemented by a specialised offer of activities (including professional workshops, a portfolio review, night-time projections, and outdoor encounters and actions) designed to convert Madrid into a point of encounter and reflection on photography's role in the contemporary art scene.
Festival exhibitions are divided into two large sections: the Official Section, which comprises museums, institutions and large exhibition halls, and the Festival Off, in which art galleries and other exhibition spaces participate. The heart of PHotoEspaña is located along the Paseo de la Castellana (Madrid's main artery, which divides the city in two). The city's most important large museums, art centres, institutions and art galleries are located in this area. The content of Official Section exhibitions always revolves around a central theme, chosen by the Festival's artistic director, a position that is renewed every three years.
PHotoEspaña is a festival made by and for society. Created and organised thanks to private initiative, it seeks support and sponsorship both from private enterprises and from public institutions such as the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the City Council of Madrid.
This year, the internal coherence of its programming is guaranteed - even more than in previous editions - by the fact that almost all the 24 shows in the Official Section are related to PHE03's central theme, "Nos/Otros. Identity and Otherness", which was chosen by Oliva María Rubio as the closing theme in her three-year project as artistic director of PHotoEspaña.
Oliva María Rubio holds a doctorate in History and Theory of Art from Madrid’s Autonomous University. After working in the Canal de Isabel II Foundation, she was a project co-ordinator for the Banesto Cultural Foundation and later worked in Corbis. She has curated the exhibitions “Niños del mundo (Museum of Man, A Coruña) and the travelling show La Gauche Divine, among others. Rubio has also scheduled the Caixa Galicia Foundation exhibition hall in Vigo (1999-2000: Cartier-Bresson, M. Franck, R. Davila, C. Bernad). She is curator for the “Generations. Caja Madrid Art Awards and Grants” project. Before becoming Artistic Director of PHE in 2001, she acted as General Coordinator (1999) and Subdirector (2000). A member of several juries on art and photography, including the National Photography Prize (2000) and the Expertise Committee of Visual Arts of “Culture 2003”, European Commission, María Rubio is the author of La mirada interior. El surrealismo y la pintura (Madrid, Tecnos, 1994), and also writes articles for catalogues, magazines and newspapers.
The Festival's main theme: NosOtros: Identity and Otherness
In her third year as artistic director of the Festival, Oliva María Rubio has decided to complete her project on identity with an investigation of the other in relation to the self with the theme "Nos/Otros. Identity and Otherness". In this way, the artistic director wants to show diverse perceptions of the multiplicity of selves in the contemporary human being, the discovery that the other is also oneself while, simultaneously, the self is the other, or the many "others" that a human being can contain, particularly in dreams and the imaginings of the subconscious.
According to Oliva María Rubio, self can also be seen as pure artifice as in the case of cyborgs, hybrids between machines and nature, hinted at in certain scientific developments and fully anticipated in science fiction, not to mention the amazing progress in surgery and genetics that now enables the human being to become something else by voluntarily modifying his/her nature.
Nevertheless, an atavistic impulse that harks back to the origin of the human being, causes the other, the one who is different, to be rejected as a threat to our liberty and identity. In the globalised world in which we live, these fears have multiplied and created all sorts of frontiers. These fears can only be counteracted by trying to see the other as what it is: an equal, a fellow being.
Oliva María Rubio has programmed this Festival in order to show the diversity of viewpoints, contradictions and ways of representing the self and his relationship with the others.
Guest Curators
In order to achieve greater artistic liberty when preparing the Festival programme, PHotoEspaña's artistic director counts on the collaboration of a series of international guest curators. This year they are Elizabeth A. Brown and Enrica Viganò.
Elizabeth A. Brown, an American, is a teacher, writer and researcher. Currently, she is chief curator at the University of Washington art museum. Previously, she directed the exhibition department and curated over twenty exhibitions and collections at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She received her doctorate in Art History from New York's University of Columbia in 1989 with her thesis on the photographs of Constantin Brancusi.
Enrica Viganò, who is Italian, currently directs the Foto&Photo photography festival and ClicArt gallery (Milan). After having worked with major photography agencies, in the 1990s she co-ordinated and directed the activities of the II Diaframma-Kodak Cultura gallery in Milan devoted to photography. She has curated over 80 photography exhibitions, including monographic shows on Cecil Beaton, Inge Morath and Imogen Cunningham and has collaborated with PHotoEspaña since 1998. In 1999, she was in charge of international projects.
Important Innovations
Together with the Descubrimientos Portfolio Review, professional photography workshops and night-time projections, the Festival presents a series of important innovations with regard to past editions. First, the Festival's nature as a meeting point is enhanced this year with the celebration, on 19 and 20 June, of the "I PHotoEspaña Encounters. Debates on Photography", directed by José Miguel García Cortés, the director of Castellón's Espai d'Art Contemporani, and Sponsor by Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. More than 30 national and international experts, curators, critics and artists will participate in this first edition and they will consider the theme "The Sense and Non-Sense of Identities". Furthermore, two of PHotoEspaña's long-held desires - to have Madrid live photography in its streets and to open the Festival to new artistic trends - will become a reality this year with the celebration of "urbietorbi. PHotoEspaña in the Street", a project specifically designed for the Festival, in which some 30 artists will take part, from 12 to 22 June, in the streets, plazas and commercial establishments in Madrid's central Barrio de Huertas, with photographs, videos and all sorts of installations. Major Spanish new creators, such as Perejaume, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Juan Carlos Robles and Laura Torrado, Tamara Arroyo, will participate in this project.
Each year, PHotoEspaña awards six prizes to reward the professional trajectory and contribution to photography of artists, experts and entities connected with the world of photography.
FESTIVAL´S STRUCTURE
EXHIBITIONS
Official Section. Art Spaces and Gest Halls
Off festival: Galleries and Guest Rooms
.
PHOTOESPAÑA IN THE STREETS
urbietorbi
snapsnokia
I ENCOUNTERS PhotoEspaña
PARALLEL ACTIVITIES
Discoveries
Epson workshops and Masterclass
Night Projections
Public Prize M2
OFFICIAL PRIZES 2003
EXHIBITIONS
OFFICIAL SECTION
ART SPACES
CASA DE AMÉRICA
-Anthony Goicolea
- Alexander Apóstol
-Rosângela Rennó
CENTRO CULTURAL CONDE DUQUE
- Up close, nobody is normal
- Nancy Burson
-Pierre Gonnord / Tanit Plana
-Isabel María y Transnational Temps
CENTRO CULTURAL DE LA VILLA
- Jaume Blassi
- From father to son.Works from the Lambert Collection
- Hannah Villiger
CÍRCULO DE BELLAS ARTES
-Joel-Peter Witkin
-Kim Sooja
-On the other Side
CONSEJERIA DE LAS ARTES DE LA COMUNIDAD DE MADRID
-Christine Spengler
-Cuadros de una exposición. Fondos de la colección de fotografía de la Comunidad de Madrid.
FUNDACIÓN CANAL
-Between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Towers: 1989-2001
FUNDACIÓN CARLOS DE AMBERES
- Citibank Photography Prize 2003
MUSEO COLECCIONES ICO
-Sol LeWitt
FUNDACIÓN TELEFÓNICA
- Philip-Lorca diCorcia
INJUVE / Sala Amadís
- Paco Gómez / Tony Kristensson
MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA
- Francesc Catalá-Roca
- Jesse Fernández
-Rax Rinnekangas
REAL JARDÍN BOTÁNICO
- Samuel Fosso
-Julie Moos
GUEST HALLS
ANTIGUA FABRICA DE TABACOS
-Double vision
ESTACIÓN DE RECOLETOS/RENFE
-Peter Granser
HOTEL NH NACIONAL ****
- Ángel Marcos
METRO NUEVOS MINISTERIOS
- García de Cubas
OFF FESTIVAL
ART GALLERIES
Arnés y Röpke
- Robert Mapplethorpe
Astarté
- Mathieu Pernot
Carmen de la Guerra
- Jaume Parera, Soledad Córdoba, Alex Mc Quilkin and Anavia
Espacio Mínimo
- Risk Hazekamp / Mark Kimber
Fernando Pradilla
- Marcos López
Gema Lazcano
- Rafal Milach
Helga de Alvear
- Frank Thiel – Javier Vallhonrat
Juana de Aizpuru
- North – Center - South
La Fábrica
- Andrea Robbins & Max Becher and Sergio Belinchón
Magda Belloti
- Javier Casaseca
María Martín
- Jean-Baptiste Huynh
Marta Cervera
- Francesco Jodice
Masha Prieto
- Antoni Socías and Enric Socías
Oliva Arauna
- Alfredo Jaar
Pilar Parra
- Tim White
Raquel Ponce
- Mayte Alonso
Salvador Díaz
- Alexandra Ranner.
Valle Quintana
- Tamara Arroyo
GUEST HALLS
EFTI
they-Are
- José Manuel Díaz-Burgos / José María Díaz Maroto / Plácido L. Rodríguez / Alberto Schommer
Goethe Institut
“Smile Please!”. Studio photographs: a typological analysis
FNAC
- Antoine D´Agata
Fotosíntesis
- Antonio Flórez Gutiérrez
Instituto de México
The inner gaze. Guelatao´s Photographic Workshop
PHOTOESPAÑA IN THE STREETS
urbietorbi
Snaps Nokia
ENCOUNTERS PhotoEspaña
I Debates on Photograpy
PARALLEL ACTIVITIES
Discoveries
Epson Photography workshops
Night projections
Public Prize
OFFICIAL AWARDS PHE03
PhotoEspaña Prize
Bartolomé Ros Prize
Injuve Prize
Descubrimientos Prize for the Best Portfolio
Habitat Hotels Festival Off Prize
PHOTOESPAÑA 2003
Madrid – June 11th – July 13th
EXHIBITIONS
OFFICIAL SECTION
ART SPACES
CASA DE AMÉRICA
P. de Recoletos, 2
Teñ- 915954800
Anthony Goicolea
Second Nature
Curator: Rafael Doctor
Preview: 06.11.03
Opening: 06.12.03 – 07.27.03
Sponsor: Repsol YPF
The American artist of Cuban origin, Anthony Goicolea (Atlanta, 1971) has created a work that never leaves the viewer indifferent, if we are to judge by the passionate attacks and defences it inspires. Goicolea blends theatrical elements - lighting, costumes, make-up and sets - with digital manipulation of his images and a boundless imagination in order to provide a complex reflection on the borders of personality that transcends the inoffensive appearance he presents to us.
From the beginning of his short career, Goicolea has projected himself in a series of photographic self-portraits that show us the world in which his dreams and desires are gestated. From 1995 onward, his work is characterised by combining two opposite sensations in one single image without allowing either of them to dominate the other. The opposition between empathy and rejection, paralleled by the humour and horror transmitted by his works, becomes the theme on which he insists in order to slowly approach questions that are controversial if presented explicitly and without shame. Since he himself is the only model for his photographs, Goicolea has always been the subject of the themes and fantasies found in his oeuvre.
The author makes us reflect on the sexuality inherent in childhood and adolescence and on the proprieties that stop us from acknowledging this because this topic is considered a perversion if mentioned by adults. It is logical, therefore, that his work has been associated at times with Steven Meisel's advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein or, at another level, to Larry Clark's photographs of teenagers. Such a comparison is as appropriate as indicating that Charles Ray's mannequins have had an influence on Goicolea's work, particularly when several of his characters (always with the artist's face) take part in a frenzied, narcissistic orgy.
Collaborating: Vanidad
Organized: Casa de América
CASA DE AMÉRICA
Alexander Apóstol
Polished Tenant / Fontainbleau
Curator: Eva Grinstein
Preview: 06.11.03
Opening: 06.12.03 – 07.27.03
Sponsor: Repsol YPF
In his series "Residente Pulido" (Polished Tenant), a montage of photographic images, the Venezuelan artist Alexander Apóstol (Caracas, 1969) takes 1950s Modernist buildings and digitally transforms them into a "bizarre species" of enclosed monuments, with no possible entrances or exits, in which the only reference is their own material. Although located in the dismantled city centre, this aesthetically homogeneous architectural repertory actually belongs to the artist's own personal environment and individuality, which rejects public space.
The urban object is thus presented as an ambiguous, solid yet empty monolith. Its misleading nature is shown by the shining porcelain texture of its decorative façade, which is full of small cracks that confirm its fragility. The buildings are named after famous porcelain manufacturers, thus concealing another literal and fictitious geography. The names Limoges, Royal Copenhagen, Sèvres, Meissen, Capodimonte, Rosenthal and Lladró narrate the story of a glorious utopia that now covers dull, ruined structures and they ironically underpin the concept of a deteriorated landscape.
In this series of buildings, the author establishes a metaphor referring to the position, attitude and "façade" of society's notion of the Latin American male. To a certain extent, Apóstol questions whether an obligatory attitude of arrogance, doubtful strength and vigour is possible in these polished porcelain monoliths. Apóstol's work is based on the metaphor of the ambiguous, but it becomes obsessive when interpreting the complex dilemma of creating an identity.
Organized: Casa de América
CASA DE AMÉRICA / Galería Americana
Rosângela Rennó
Farewell Ceremony
Preview: 06.11.03
Opening: 06.12.03 – 07.27.03
Sponsor: Repsol - YPF
Brazilian artist Rosângela Rennó (Belo Horizonte, 1962) has worked mainly on appropriating existing photographic images, which she finds and rescues from a variety of archives and other sources, and then submits to a process of manipulation and presentation.
She is particularly interested in appropriating these images, bereft of any aesthetic value, and inserting them in the institutionalised artistic circuit and in discussing the circuit of production and distribution of images. Underlying her work is a desire to return identities and rescue people and experiences lost in anonymity from the shadows and oblivion.
The work that Rosângela Rennó presents in PHotoEspaña 03, “Ceremônia do Adeus” (Farewell Ceremony), 1997/2003, originated in a series of photographs developed from discarded negatives that the artist found in Havana. They are wedding shots that show couples inside cars or on motorcycles after the ceremony. Rennó manipulated some copies that initially were poorly defined or even badly taken. In an ironic touch, the title plays on the impossibility of leaving Cuba by either car or motorcycle.
In other series such as “Vulgo” (1998), Rennó recovered photographs of prisoners that had been abandoned in the Sâo Paulo Penitentiary archives and returned colour to individuals photographed in black and white, emphasising the unique character of each person within the whole. By doing so, she freed faceless subjects from being mere prison statistics. In her series “Museo Penitenciario/Cicatriz” (Penitentiary Museum/Scar, 1997-1998), Rennó worked on the theme of tattoos, using photographs taken in prison of inmates' tattoos in which the tattooed words or images reflect each prisoner's will to exist and affirm himself.
CENTRO CULTURAL CONDE DUQUE / Sala Juan de Villanueva
Conde Duque, 11
Tel 91 588 58 24
Up Close, Nobody is Normal
Gianni Berengo Gardin y Carla Cerati, Chien Chi Chang, Raymond Depardon, Claudio Edinger, Clint Imboden, Uliano Lucas, Anders Petersen, Giovanni Sesia, Chris Steele-Perkins, Silvio Wolf and Colors magazine
Curator: Enrica Viganò
Preview: 06.12.03
Opening: 06.12.03 – 07.13.03
Sponsor: Ayuntamiento de Madrid (Centro Cultural Conde Duque)
The exhibition “Up Close, Nobody is Normal”seeks to review several historical stages in the relationship between mental health and society and simultaneously show the way ten artists who use photography relate to the concept of normality or abnormality in human identity.
Identity and otherness are the opposing elements found in the route proposed by the accusing images of Gianni Berengo Gardin (Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, 1930) and Carla Cerati (Bergamo, Italy). These images, together with the book “Morire di Classe”, were instrumental in the success of Franco Basaglia's revolution in the 1960s. Basaglia attributed the impossibility of mental patients recovering from their illness to the characteristics of the hospitals housing them, and he theorised about closing insane asylums. Previously, the psychological and even physical violence of the system focused on defending healthy people from the insane and the patient was treated as a being under the institution's total control.
Chien-Chi Chang (Taiwan, 1961) in “The Chain” decontextualises a repulsive reality in photographs of an insane asylum in Taiwan in which patients live chained together in pairs. The obsessive repetition of their postures and of the chain make their lack of freedom and consequently of identity dramatically visible.
This accusation is supported by a video by Raymond Depardon (Villefranche-sur-Saône, France, 1942) who visited the St. Clement Hospital in Venice and passionately documented its deplorable conditions before the reform. The French photographer, in close contact with Basaglia, immediately adopted the principles of the democratic psychiatry revolution, however although he wanted to photograph the changes directly, he was unable to do so.
Experiments throughout the world have forged a new path toward the integration of mental patients, or at least the attempt to recuperate them. The change is slow and full of contradictions. Uliano Lucas, with a series of photographs taken of the customers at the The Strawberry Place Bar in the Trieste psychiatric hospital, seeks to emphasise the indifference existing between the patient and worker sharing the same space. The Swedish photographer Anders Petersen (1944) made a similar work by visiting a psychiatric institution for three years, establishing a good relationship with patients imposing human affection on the "professional superstructure". Each person is unique and different from the rest. One only has to accept this.
Obsessed for years with the theme of insanity after an experience in his own family, in 1989 Brazilian photographer Claudio Edinger was able to enter the maze of Juqueri in Sâo Paulo, which at the time was the largest psychiatric hospital in South America and housed 3,500 mental patients. In successive visits, as he attempted to understand madness, Edinger built up a certain intimacy with these people, an affinity with a condition that is usually frightening. He confronts our vulnerability and profound helplessness with a situation that both terrifies and attracts us.