PhotoEspaña 2026 Opens in Madrid With Nearly 100 Exhibitions

PhotoEspaña held its official opening in Madrid in June 2026. By September nearly 100 exhibitions will have taken place across the capital and other cities, featuring work by more than 300 visual artists. The exhibitions are loosely corralled under the theme of reimagining.

They include shows by established Spanish and international photographers as well as emerging artists. Fundación Mapfre hosts an expansive overview of the career of Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena. The exhibition includes three series he produced focusing on the US-Mexico border: Invisible Line, Between Borders and Los Americanos.

Cartagena said of the border wall: “It’s potent, it shows its power all the time. ” He added that the wall “dissolves the idea of identity and personhood,” turning individuals into generic figures. Seven life-size portraits by Laia Abril are installed at the Museo del Romanticismo.

The subjects are six women and one trans man, photographed in the postures they adopt to manage pain from endometriosis. Abril said the portraits were taken from above to reference out-of-body experiences during pain. “The idea was to visualise in real size,” she said.

Lux and Umbra, a retrospective of Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen, is on view at the Fernán Gómez centre. The show draws on her childhood in Kenya and interests in fashion design, art history and surrealism. Rafal Milach’s exhibition is on view at Círculo de Bellas Artes.

It features banners, murals and free newspapers from the Archive of Public Protests, which he promotes as tools for strengthening solidarity networks in Poland and eastern Europe. Reimagining is a group show of 13 projects by photographers. Txema Salvans’ series The Wreckage of a Catastrophe is included.