Beyond The Single Image – Spanish Photography From The Foto Colectania Collection, Barcelona Exhibition (Thursday, January 23, 2025)
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2025
Hours: Open between 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Admission: $10 per adult. Free for State of Florida students with ID. $5.00 for out of state students.
Location: The Margulies Collection at The Warehouse (591 NW 27th St, Miami, FL 33127)
The Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona and The Margulies Collection at The Warehouse are pleased to announce their collaboration to present in Miami the exhibition Beyond the Single Image. Spanish Photography from the Foto Colectania Collection, Barcelona, a journey through the most relevant works from Foto Colectania’s collection of Spanish and Portuguese photography. The exhibition will be open to the public from November 13, 2024, to April 26, 2025.
The exhibition presents 150 works by 36 photographers from the Foto Colectania Collection, which currently holds more than 3,000 photographs by Spanish and Portuguese artists, along with 1,000 photographs and 24,000 negatives from the Paco Gómez Archive, making it undoubtedly one of the most important private collections of Iberian photography internationally. These images testify to a dual process of modernization that began in the 1950s, reflecting changes both in photography and in Southern European societies.
Curated by Carles Guerra, the exhibition is organized into 20 thematic sequences distributed across 10 sections, recreating a dialogue between a single image and what could be defined as an alternative development of events through photographic sequences. The presentation of the works in the exhibition space, which resembles a photographic atlas, transforms the Foto Colectania collection into a mechanism capable of generating new narratives and meanings through unexpected connections, juxtapositions, and sequences of images.
The exhibition is based on The Course of Events, which was shown earlier this year at Foto Colectania’s headquarters in Barcelona; however, the curator has provided a more comprehensive revision focused on the American audience. Among the 36 photographers featured in this edition are contemporary photographers such as Laia Abril, Cristina de Middel, and Txema Salvans; renowned names like Pilar Aymerich, Joan Fontcuberta, Manel Armengol, Cristina García Rodero, Manolo Laguillo, and Alberto García-Alix; and classics such as Leopoldo Pomés, Xavier Miserachs, Ramón Masats, and Francisco Gómez.
According to Carles Guerra: “Modernization often became synonymous with iconization, reducing and synthesizing reality into an emblematic image. These were the photographs that shaped events; although each event would have generated many more versions of what happened, only one image acquired iconic status. An image that is often recognized with just a tacit agreement.”
He adds: “On the other hand, there are other collective events – demonstrations, processions, rituals – and crowds that evoke the inherently procedural and quantitative nature of photography as an alternative politics lurking in the crowd. These moments demand more than a single image. In fact, as many as possible, hence the title of the exhibition.”
With this approach, we can envision that some of the most iconic images in the collection, such as El hombre en la calle Pelayo, an urban scene photographed in 1962 by Xavier Miserachs, coexist with the rituals photographed by Jordi Esteva in Africa or the traditional representations documented by Cristina García Rodero in the rural areas of the Iberian Peninsula. On the other hand, more recent works by artists like Laia Abril (with her Photo Novels from the series On Abortion), Cristina de Middel (with her Afronauts fictions), Adriana López Sanfeliu (with her sustained follow-up of Los Salazar), and Jorge Ribalta (with his series on spaces dedicated to techno music at the Sónar festival) coexist with the work done by Ricard Terré in a special education center in 1998, group photos taken in a small community by Fernando Gordillo, or the mini-series of photographs signed by Gabriel Cualladó and extracted from the ones he took at the Penella wedding (1960).
The photographic apparatus that emerges from this proposal is no longer limited to a camera that produces singular images, but rather extends to the willingness to relate works that seem unrelated to one another, but together form fragments, regions, and sequences whose narratives intertwine. Like in a geographic atlas, where one position or location is always interpreted in relation to the others.
Beyond the Single Image. Spanish Photography from the Foto Colectania Collection, Barcelona is the result of the collaboration between The Margulies Collection at The Warehouse, one of the most important art organizations in the U.S., and the Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona. Martin Z. Margulies is a trustee of the Foto Colectania Foundation. Part of his photography collection was exhibited at Foto Colectania in 2012 in the exhibition The Dwelling Life of Man: Martin Z. Margulies Collection, curated by Régis Durand.
Participating Photographers
Laia Abril, Helena Almeida, Manel Armengol, Pilar Aymerich, Clemente Bernad, Josep María Casademont, Gérard Castello-Lopes, Colita, Joan Colom, Gabriel Cualladó, Jordi Esteva, Joan Fontcuberta, Alberto García-Alix, Cristina García Rodero, Francisco Gómez, Joaquim Gomis, Fernando Gordillo, Roger Guaus, Cristóbal Hara, Manolo Laguillo, Adriana López Sanfeliu, Chema Madoz, Ramón Masats, Cristina de Middel, Xavier Miserachs, Jorge Molder, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Leopoldo Pomés, Jorge Ribalta, Xavier Ribas, Humberto Rivas, Rafael Sanz Lobato, Txema Salvans, Ton Sirera, Ricard Terré, Miguel Trillo.
Acknowledgments
This exhibition has been made possible thanks to the agreement and collaboration of Spanish companies with a presence in the U.S. such as Grupo Damm, Banco Sabadell Miami Branch, Rodilla, and Grupo Roda. The project is supported by institutions such as Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the Embassy of Spain in the U.S., the Consulate General of Spain in Miami, the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Miami, and the Institut Ramon Llull.
Contact The Margulies Collection at The Warehouse
Website: www.margulieswarehouse.com
