PhotoEspaña 2026 Opens with 300+ Artists Across Spain

PhotoEspaña, Spain's leading photography festival, opened in Madrid this month and will run through September with nearly 100 exhibitions featuring over 300 visual artists. The theme 'Reimagining' loosely connects shows by major figures and emerging talents. At Fundación Mapfre, Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena presents three series—'Invisible Line', 'Between Borders', and 'Los Americanos'—exploring the US-Mexico border's impact on identity. At Museo del Romanticismo, Laia Abril's intimate show 'Endometriosis' displays seven life-size portraits of women and a trans man in pain-relief postures. The Fernán Gómez centre hosts 'Lux and Umbra', a retrospective of Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen, whose work blends fashion, surrealism, and themes of death and sexuality. Polish photographer Rafał Milach's exhibition at Círculo de Bellas Artes uses banners, murals, and free newspapers to challenge protest photography conventions via the Archive of Public Protests. The group show 'Reimagining' features 13 projects, including Txema Salvans' 'The Wreckage of a Catastrophe' on roadside life, Jon Gorospe's 'The Grid' on commuting, Aleix Plademunt's 'Iberia' on colonial gaze in Peru, and Eduardo Nave's 'Espacio Disponible' on empty billboards. Two exhibitions honor canonical photobooks: Richard Avedon's 'In the American West, 1979-1984' at Fundación Mapfre and Robert Frank's 'The Americans' at Espacio Fundación Telefónica.