PALAFRUGELL.- The 10th edition of the
Xavier Miserachs Photography Biennale takes place from the 4th August until the 14th October in Palafrugell, Girona, Spain. The biennale comprises 11 exhibitions spread across several cultural spaces in the city - all easily accessible on foot - as well as an extensive program of parallel activities, open to the general public.
The objective of the biennale is to showcase the work of important figures in national and international photography, while simultaneously supporting new voices. Each edition also features the work of a previously unknown photographer, often working as an amateur, whose work unwittingly reflects the recent history of the nation.
For the first time in its history, the biennale opened on the 4th of August, extending its duration by 6 weeks, in order to offer the full program of exhibitions over the entirety of the summer.
The biennale presents: Works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, including a selection of his most emblematic works; the first exhibition based on the photo book Costa Brava Show by Xavier Miserachs - on the twentieth anniversary of his death; a retrospective of Samuel Aranda's two decades as a photojournalist, and 40 portraits of men and women from Andalusia by Atín Aya.
The photographer Sandra Balsells chronicles the Easter parades in Sicily; Maria Contreras Coll examines the life of Nepali women who live isolated from their community during their period of menstruation; Lorenzo Meloni - the youngest photographer on the books of Magnum Photos - documents the loss of the final strongholds of the Islamic State, and Joan Alvado exhibits his project on a unique 'shepherd school' in rural Catalonia.
An exhibition dedicated to re-discovering the fin de siecle works of locally born photographer Jaume Ferrer; an artistic dialogue between the photographer Josep Esquirol and the writer Josep Pla, and a show by the photojournalist Miquel Dewever-Plana focused on the photo book as object, completes the exhibition program.
The Biennale has been complemented by a program of parallel activities including: A workshop with Samuel Aranda on how to create a documentary photo project; A talk by Xavier Antich on the life and work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the staging of the play 'El color de la llum' [The colour of light] by Ferran Joanmiquel, which tackles themes relating to photography and photojournalism.
The exhibitions during the 10th Xavier Miserachs Photography biennale take place in 6 spaces across the city of Palafrugell (Girona, Spain), among them, several ex-industrial spaces key to the city's history of cork production, now converted into centres for cultural development.