Greif Alumni: Reimagining at this year’s PHotoESPAÑA

Founded in 1998, PHotoESPAÑA has solidified its standing as one of the world’s preeminent celebrations of photography and visual arts. In every edition, PHotoESPAÑA serves as a premier showcase for national and international photographers and artists while providing a vital platform for galleries and emerging creators to connect with new audiences. It is, above all, a monumental collective project, made possible by the annual collaboration of over a hundred public and private institutions. At the heart of this cultural engine is La Fábrica, a private initiative dedicated to contemporary projects that bridge creativity, design, and the arts.

In view of today's “fury of images,” to quote Joan Fontcuberta, this year the festival focuses on photographic creativity, experimentation and the exploration of the limits of the image. “Reimagining,” under María Santoyo's artistic direction, understands curiosity and rebellion as tools to question the reality, the authority of the image and its production methods. A solid continuation of last year’s enquiry into the “right to photograph,” in Santoyo’s words.

Early highlights from the festival include the group show “Ain’t that just like me? | ¿No es eso típico de mí?” taking place across El Local and Camara Oscura Galeria de Arte. Grief Alumni and collaborators like Roger Ballen, Julia Fullerton-Batten, Ignacio Navas and our recent discovery Yun Ping Li along with Emma Á. Marty, Elina Brotherus, Cristóbal Ascencio and Ellen Kooi are united. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s concept of ‘response-ability,’ the exhibition curated by Marty and Juan Curto invites reflection on the challenges that bodies and spaces face in a context where the physical and the digital are increasingly intertwined.whose photographic-based visual narratives address contemporary traumas, shifting identities, and environmental transformation.

The Photobooks Exhibition returns at Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga to bring together the finalist books of the Best Photography Book of the Year Award, organized by PHotoESPAÑA since 1998 to recognize excellence in photographic publishing. The selection includes publications from the award shortlist and offers an updated overview of some of the most significant photobook projects published internationally.

From the selection of shortlisted photobooks, a significant anchor is Helen Levitt monograph, edited by Joshua Chuang and others to accompany her major touring exhibition; it stands as the most comprehensive survey to date of the American photographer’s pioneering street work. Joining this foundational research book are contemporary explorations like Robin Hinsch’s “Lonely Are All the Bridges” and the collaborative project “The Façade” by Rafael Roncato and Carolina Monteiro. Roncato makes a dual impression on the list, with his “Tropical Trauma Misery Tour,” winning the Dummy Award 2024.

The shortlist continues to showcase the works of Greif Alumni Roxana Savin, Farren van Wyk, and Daan Paans. The narrative diversity is bolstered by the social and conceptual inquiries of Federico Estol and Nelson Morales alongside the psychological intensity of Roger Ballen. Rounding out the selection are Wara Vargas, Fabiola Cedillo, Jason Fulford each of whom brings a distinct, experimental energy to a collection that celebrates the photobook as a vital medium for both historical preservation and contemporary circulation of images.

PHotoESPAÑA also presents the group show “Orientarse en lo incierto” (“Finding One’s Way in the Uncertain”) at Lens, an exhibition curated by Laura San Segundo and Julio Galeote. The projects trace personal paths engaging with memory, belonging, and affective bonds, among which we see the work of our community member Jose Ladrón de Guevara Coca. His practice unfolds through sustained engagement with the social environments he inhabits, addressing identity, migration, and territory through experiences of displacement. Moving across Christian faith communities and hip hop culture, he explores tensions between public and private spheres, as well as belief systems and social opacity. His work has gained international recognition through awards, scholarships, and participation in prominent contemporary curatorial platforms.

Many of PHotoESPAÑA exhibitions across Madrid focus on single artists such as Fernanda del Barrio’s “Ejercicios para construir un territorio” (“Exercises to Construct a Territory”) at E Ciento Veinte, a reflection on identity as it relates to physical and emotional space. Her show is curated by Karmele Rodríguez Larragain as a process of reconstruction, where territory is not something granted, but something built through memory, action, and the gaze. Del Barrio uses photography to intervene in the landscape, creating a narrative where nature and the human footprint are indissolubly intertwined. Using visual metaphors and a restrained color palette, Fernanda del Barrio suggests that territory is a subjective construction, a map drawn by our experiences and desires. Her so-called ‘exercises’ are acts of symbolic appropriation that seek to give meaning to the sometimes-conflicting relationship between the body and its environment.

Spreading across more than a hundred venues in Madrid and multiple other cities across the country, PHotoESPAÑA 2026 has once again turned into a living map of critical thinking around the medium of photography.