Female Photography

15/06/2016. Exhibition at the Cultural Center of Villa [MAD] Spain. 02/06> 28/06
metalocus, ELENA GALLEGO

Inside the PHotoEspaña ’16 festival we find two photographic exhibitions included in the Official Section of the International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts, which can be visited in the exhibition hall Fernán Gómez, at the Cultural Center of Villa, with free access.

Joana Biarnés, The Beatles arriving Madrid, 1965 © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, The Beatles arriving Madrid, 1965 © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Paul McCartney in his hotel room © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Fashion shoot © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Marisol © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Antonio "the Dancer" with Rudolph Nureyev, Madrid 1971 © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Bullfighters © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Tita Cervera with Lex Barker © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Sammy Davis Jr and Palomo Linares, Añover del Tajo, Toledo 1967 © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Dalí © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Lucía Bosé © Juana Biarnés

Joana Biarnés, Roger Moore © Juana Biarnés

Cristina De Middel, "Muchismo", 2016 © Cristina De Middel

PHotoEspaña 2016 presents two photographers separately, Joana Biarnés and Cristina de Middel, taking a journey through their prolific work, but with a common denominator: both are women who fight, although at different times, and find a different personally and telling stories with their cameras. His peculiar way of seeing the world allows them to maintain a balance between objective and subjective, letting the viewer to be who explores and decides.

Joana Biarnés. Counterflow.

Curated by Chema Conesa, this exhibition reveals the unknown work from who was the first Spanish photojournalist woman. A brave one who took is place in a man's world, and captured with his camera the spirit of an era.

The photographic legacy of Joana Biarnés (Terrasa, 1935) is the first-person testimony of a key stage of the twentieth century: the graph and social chronicle of the Franco regime and the beginning of a new democracy. In this exhibition we can see 90 of her photographs, where she portrayed the great characters who marked the history of the 60s and 70s: Jackie Kennedy, Louis Armstrong, Marisol, Yul Brynner, Dalí, Jack Lemmon, Orson Wells, Roman Polanski, among others; or the Beatles, in whose plane she slipped to achieve a historic exclusive.

Her work, as Conesa explains, "distils closeness and sincerity, without unnecessary artifices; as well as its persistence in getting a picture that stood out and had to explain everything, as her father always advised to her. A tenacity necessary for someone who swam against the tide".

Cristina de Middel. Muchismo.

The second sample in the Fernán Gómez Cultural Center of Villa presents the work of another woman, the photographer Cristina Middel (Alicante, 1975), one of the most important artists of contemporary Spanish photography.

The exhibition offers a journey through the prolific career of the artist, over 300 photographs including some of his most famous series. De Middel shares with no filters in Muchismo what these years have given to her. The images are all copies of her inventory with variations and adaptations that respond to fairs, plans and commissions. With those photographs she told stories, but now, as if they were words in a phrase, she plays with them, rediscovers and questions the production and repetition of photographic prints.

De Middel published her book Afronautas in 2012, a reaction to the limitations of the documentary language when describing and explaining the world. The relationship between photography, reality and truth, along with the role the media plays in it, stood at the bow of her artistic concerns.