Barcelona will once again be the epicenter of experimental photography from July 20 to 25 with a new edition of the Experimental Photo Festival, an event that will bring together artists, researchers, and creators from more than forty countries in a program full of exhibitions, conferences, and over sixty workshops dedicated to exploring new ways of understanding the image.
In a context marked by the proliferation of digital images, algorithms, and visual automation, the Barcelona festival champions photography as a space for research, experimentation, and shared creation. "Experimenting is not a result, it is an attitude of constant search," explain the festival directors, Laura Ligari and Pablo Giori. They point out that experimental photography seeks to go beyond industrial processes, recovering the scientific and artisanal aspect of its origins to "think about the future of the image in a world full of digital images," they reflect.
The process: the most important thing
For its organizers, experimental photography does not depend on a specific technique. "You can experiment everywhere: in analog, in digital, and in mixed techniques. What matters is the playful disposition not to know where you will end up," they state. In this sense, they advocate processes ranging from building one's own cameras to using plants, sunlight, or everyday objects to generate images.
Five days of programming
The program will begin on July 20 at Mont.bcn with the exhibitions Liens invisibles, by Louve Delfieu; Sueños del tiempo, by Laura Brinkmann, and God in a Beer Can: 0.5L Arctic Edition, by Thomas Lafuente, three proposals that explore memory, perception, and visual narrative through photography, video, and installation.
The next day, Borsí Sala Carrer Ciutat will host Flying Roots, by María Solaguren-Beascoa Negre, a project focused on ecological trichromatic cyanotype that reflects on sustainability, nature, and photography based on the figure of the bearded vulture. On July 22, The Time Between, by Lluís Estopiñan, will open, a proposal that focuses on the margins of analog photography and everything that usually remains outside the image.
Wide selection of international creators
On July 23, the Experimental Hub will present Windows To The Real, a collective exhibition dedicated to experimental documentary photography, while on July 25 the Centre Cívic Pati Llimona and the Casal de Gent Gran will bring together a wide selection of individual exhibitions by international creators working with analog, hybrid, digital photography and installation to address themes such as memory, territory, ecology, feminism or the body.
The Experimental Photo Festival was born, explain Ligari and Giori, from the desire to create community. "What we missed in the world of photography was precisely that: supporting each other, being together and sharing." For this reason, they assure that the festival is "a space where diverse communities meet and recognize each other from equality," where processes are as important as the final images and where "there is always something to discover and new ways of communicating through photography."
Beyond the exhibitions
In addition to the exhibitions, the festival will offer an extensive program of conferences with figures such as Christina Z. Anderson, Justin Quinnell, Laia Abril, Ana Angélica Costa, Victoria Ahrens and Nic Ma, who will reflect on feminist photography, ecology, archives, materiality and hybrid technologies.
The training aspect will be completed with more than sixty workshops dedicated to processes such as cyanotype, anthotype, pinhole cameras, emulsions, chemigrams, film soup or expanded photography.
You can consult the entire program here.
