MADRID, SPAIN.- PHotoEspaña 2006 explores the relationships between nature and culture from the viewpoint of 375 photographers and visual artists. Through 23 July, PHE06 will welcome 62 exhibitions - 25 in the Official Section and 37 in the Off Festival - that present works by artists and creators of 33 different nationalities. Karl Blossfeldt, Olafur Eliasson, Joel Sternfeld, Ramón Masats and Cristóbal Hara are some of the leading figures participating in this edition.

Nature, the central theme of PHotoEspaña 2006, is studied in two major facets: the relationship between nature and culture and new interpretations of landscape art. Matadero Madrid and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum are among the new centres joining the Festival. Agnès Varda, the Nouvelle Vague pioneer, will receive a tribute in PHE Cinema. For the second consecutive year, Toledo is a Festival venue. PHotoEspaña in the Street repeats its yearly invasion of the Las Letras district with the Madrid Abierto, Cameratruck Project and Santa Ana Projections projects. Campus PHE hosts great masters of photography including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Paulo Nozolino, Ouka Leele and Paolo Roversi. Outstanding artists and intellectuals such as Alexandr Sokurov will meet in Encuentros PHE.

PHotoEspaña 2006, the International Festival of Photography and the Visual Arts, just began in Madrid. Museums, art centres, exhibition halls and galleries host 70 exhibitions with images by outstanding contemporary and classical visual artists.

This is photography’s great fiesta: exhibitions, professional encounters, a portfolio review, night-time projections, workshops, master classes and outdoor activities are some of the ingredients of a festival that turns Madrid into the world’s image capital for six weeks.

Naturaleza (Nature) is the title chosen by Horacio Fernández for his third and final year as general curator of the Festival. It is the theme that brings to a full stop a cycle that has addressed questions of interest shared by all types of public. The three editions —Historias (Histories - PHE04), Ciudad (The City - PHE05) and now Naturaleza— have been characterised by their defence of documentary languages.

The exhibitions comprising the Festival seek to address some of the issues involved in the complex relationship between culture and nature and provide a critical view of the varied panorama existing on one of today’s most important subjects. The Festival also places special emphasis on new ways of interpreting landscapes, one of the concepts that have evolved most in the history of photography and of art in general. Subjects such as the environment, rural life or the sublime interpretation of nature will be developed in the context of these two large thematic areas.

Three large projects form the base of the Festival’s line of argument. The Centro Cultural de la Villa hosts Madre Tierra (Mother Earth), a large group exhibition organised by the Fundación Santander Central Hispano, which covers three different approaches to nature by three major figures in contemporary photography: John Davies, Edward Burtynsky and Rinko Kawauchi. Davies deals with the survival of the traditional British landscape in the post-industrial era in British Landscapes. Burtynsky warns about how human action is changing the landscape with his spectacular images shot during the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China. Finally, Rinko Kawauchi, one of Japan’s most internationally recognised women artists, offers a collection of very delicate and incredibly beautiful photographs about the birth of life.

The Museo de Colecciones ICO shows another large group exhibition, Del Paisaje Reciente (Concerning Recent Landscapes). In it, thirteen artists display various ways of representing landscapes today. This mosaic of personal perceptions includes a significant presence of well-known Japanese artists and the participation of other famed photographers, such as Thomas-Joshua Cooper, Uta Barth and Rodney Graham.