Ijewo by Cristina de Middel, from the This is what hatred did series, 2015. Exhibited in Sin Fronteras at the Palacio de la Magdalena

PhotoEspana, Madrid’s annual celebration of photography, offers an extensive programme of exhibitions to suit all tastes. The work of established figures such William Klein, Berenice Abbott, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo is on display alongside shows introducing young, emerging European photographers. The subjects of the exhibitions are equally diverse, ranging from rare Soviet photobooks to snapshots bought on eBay, from collective projects decades in the making to solo undertakings completed in months.

USSR in Construction magazine, from the exhibition Avant-garde and Propaganda, Russian Books and Magazines from the Archivo Lafuente 1913-1941 at Círculo de Bellas Artes.

Portraits by Diana Markosian await the hang at Casa de America

International Women’s Day march, Madrid, 2019 by Donna Ferrato. From the exhibition Holy at Círculo de Bellas Artes

Among the many highlights is a comprehensive overview of photography projects by Stephen Shore, Josef Koudelka, Lewis Baltz, Sophie Ristelhueber and Raymond Depardon, who were officially commissioned to chart the changing landscapes of Europe from the early 1980s to the present day. Two exhibitions celebrate Donna Ferrato’s tireless work in combating domestic abuse. And the late Leila Alaoui’s sympathetic portraits of The Moroccans are displayed to sober effect at Casa Árabe.



From the series Like by Eduardo Nave, at Galería Juan Silió

We are here, Seclin, 2001, from the series Lille Metropolis by Ralph Hinterkeuser, at Museo Ico

Esauira, 2012 by Leila Alaoui from The Moroccans at Casa Árabe

At the heart of the festival are five exhibitions of art photography, gathered under the heading deja vu because of their dependence on antecedent traditions, ideas and works, which reflect on the current nature, limits and possibilities of the medium. Elina Brotherus, for example, produces work that engages with the legacy of conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s. Clare Strand makes painted versions of tabloid photographs. Patrick Pound and Délio Jasse reinterpret archival material to radically different ends. Laura Letinsky and Sharon Core use the still life as a means of raising questions about genre, tradition and reproduction.

Untitled 49 (detail) by Laura Letinksy, from the series Ill Form and Void Full, 2013 at Museo Nacional del Romanticismo

The Discrete Channel with Noise: Information Source #7, 2018 by Clare Strand, at Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa; 1828 (from the series 1606-1907) 2012 by Sharon Core at Museo Nacional del Romanticismo

Six to see

William Klein

School’s Out, Dakar 1963 (painted 2000), at Espacio Fundación Telefónica

A vibrant retrospective of the work of the US photographer William Klein presents his pictures in a display as energetic, innovative and brash as the photographs themselves. Included here are rarely seen early paintings as a student of Fernand Léger, uncompromising street photography, iconoclastic fashion work, starkly abstract scientific studies, painted contact sheets and vivid film work.

Top l-r: Dorothy and white light stripes, Paris 1962; Wings of the Hawk, New York 1955. Above: visitors at the opening at Espacio Fundación Telefónica. Photograph: JJ Guillen / EPA

Javier Vallhonrat

Poliptico 4, 2017, at Real Jardín Botánico

For more than 10 years, Javier Vallhonrat has explored, studied and photographed the Maladeta glacier in the Pyrenees. The duration of the project, the intensity of its focus and the rigour of the fieldwork are evident in the imposing and magisterial works on show. Aerial imagery outlines the development of the Maladeta over time. And ground level pictures, assembled as collages, reveal the scarred surfaces of the glacier. Their presentation suggests tectonic plates perhaps, and the fragmentary nature of Vallhonrat’s subject

Tienda negra, 2016

Perfil, 2016

Elina Brotherus

At Least One Egg, 2016, at Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa

Elina Brotherus exhibits a body of work that follows the protocols and strictures of conceptual artists of the 1960s and 70s, especially the Fluxus group. Her photographs are records of her staged enactments of proposals, or “scores”, issued by the group as guides for artistic practice. Self-expression, artistic freedom and autobiography are thereby reined in. Like all good conceptualists, Brotherus appears impeccably deadpan throughout, though she did confide that there was plenty of off-camera laughter between shoots.

Flux Harpsichord Concert, 2017

Orange Event, 2017

Patrick Pound

All photographs from the archive of Patrick Pound, at Museo Lázaro Galdiano

Collector Patrick Pound curates an exhibition of vintage photographs of diverse subjects thematically unified by the show’s invisible focus, air. Flags, wind instruments, hot air balloons and wind-blown hair abound in a playful show that attests to Pound’s wit and imagination – and to the power of Google image searches and eBay.

A wind instrument; and a steamer

Wind-blown hair and flags flying

Offland

From The Mermaid Madonna series, by Eirini Vourloumis at Centro Cultural Galileo

Offland showcases eight young European photographers, among them Eirini Vourloumis and Myrto Papadopoulos, whose work addresses, to varying degrees, themes of imagined Arcadias, refuge and identity. Papadopoulos’s understated yet compelling pictures focus on Greece’s Pomak minority and the women left behind by husbands who have emigrated to northern Europe for economic reasons. Vourloumis’s poignant series The Mermaid Madonna draws parallels between historically remote episodes of migration from Turkey to the island of Lesbos in the Aegean.

Suzanne 16, plays with her phone, while her family go to pick up chestnuts to sell in the local market, Thrace, Greece, 2017, by Myrto Papadopoulos

Untitled, Lesbos, Greece, from the series The Mermaid Madonna by Eirini Vourloumis

Délio Jasse

All photographs from The Lost Chapter, 2018, at Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa

Délio Jasse exhibits two bodies of work, Lost Chapter Nampula – 1963 and Nova Lisboa. Both combine documents salvaged from a Lisbon flea market with archival photographs of the family lives of Europeans in colonial Africa. Official stamps and lettering overlay and often obscure the monochromatic domestic scenarios. Jasse gives potent pictorial form to the integration of institutional forces, personal lives and colonial history

