With 84 exhibitions and 293 artists, this year’s PHotoESPAÑA extends into all corners of Madrid: there are shows in neo-baroque palaces and repurposed ironworks, in a vertiginous water tower and amid the capital’s lush botanical gardens. With a theme of “perpetual motion”, the festival spans from international names to anonymous discoveries – from a panoramic sample of the late Erwin Olaf’s career in a subterranean centre beneath the fountains of Plaza Colón, to photographer David Trullo’s unearthing of an illicit trove of homemade erotica from the 1930s, taken by a high-society Madrid couple who mysteriously disappeared. There’s a collection of African and Middle Eastern photographers circling themes of exodus and migration; and the convention-defying Consuelo Kanaga, a photographer who died virtually unknown but whose powerful portraits of African-American lives across the US are being newly reappraised. We chose three highlights from the multitude of voices brought together for the next era of PHotoESPAÑA – its first under new director Maria Santoyo.

A recent signing to Magnum’s illustrious cooperative, Lúa Ribeira melts into the communities she captures, including the Jamaican dance hall scene and migrants living in limbo in a Tijuana park, creating spaces where unpredictable encounters can occur. “I am interested in nuns, thieves, and gardens,” she says. “In the rotting body, witchcraft, hotel receptions, and heaven’s gates. Phantoms, funeral directors, and gravity.” She is also fascinated by the ways cultural expression can be liberating, by movements that lie outside of the mainstream, and how power structures work – preoccupations she can trace back to her upbringing in Galicia in northwest Spain, a region whose distinctive traditions were violently suppressed during Franco’s dictatorship.

PHotoESPAÑA showcases her new project, Agony in the Garden, inspired by the emerging trap and drill music scenes in Spain – where numbers of unemployed young people teeter around the second-highest in Europe. Ribeira says she’s intent less on documenting the subculture and its hedonism than reading between the lines, translating its sound and energy into moments that seem to exist outside of time. She sets her subjects in rocky landscapes dotted with illegal landfills, a backdrop that nods to this generation’s late-capitalism inheritance. In that barren place though, Ribeira finds richness in a community sometimes represented as shallow and apolitical. “I think there is something rooted and fearless in the way they articulate the present moment – the financial crisis, the pandemic, the ecological crisis,” she said at the crowded opening of her show, housed in an elegant pink-hued mansion. “This music is a way of connecting as a group of people in this present, extremely precarious moment. People who do not have a lot of money or potential jobs – but they have their phones and that gives them space to communicate, to create, to experiment, while everything that surrounds you is desolate.” Alongside her photographs, Ribeira includes a glimpse into her kaleidoscopic references – the screenshots, film stills, baroque paintings, sketches, religious and mythological imagery she draws on to create work that reaches for a way to dismantle the seemingly rigid structures that separate us.

Agony in the Garden is at Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, as part of PHotoESPAÑA, until August 25.

Young Haiti-born, LA-based photographer Widline Cadet couldn’t come to the Madrid opening of her exhibition Take this with you; despite living in the US since she was ten, she still doesn’t have a Greencard. It’s an absence that’s also conjured in her work – the early absence of her mother, who left Haiti to work in New York when she was a baby, and today, the absence across the ocean of the homeland to which Cadet can’t return. “It’s a dance between where you’re from and where you’re going,” says Désirée Kroep, the exhibition’s curator, introducing the photographer’s haunting work at the Casa de America, a 19th century palace close to El Retiro park.

Untangling the parts of herself and her history she no longer has access to, Cadet peppers the gallery with memories: framed family photographs on a mantelpiece, footage from the celebratory, Haitian funeral of a grandmother she never met, even her former living room and its floral, plastic-covered sofa and gauzy curtains, recreated in one corner. The result is a dreamlike family archive of her own that is suffused with a deep, yearning ache – but also isn’t quite what it seems. The little glitch of an extra, unaccounted for pair of limbs or the strangers on the street that she reimagines as doppelgangers or siblings all act as a reminder of the slippery nature of memory.

Take this with you is at House of America in Madrid, as part of PHotoESPAÑA, until September 7.

Displayed in a former industrial sawmill, the painterly images of Ukrainian rocket-scientist-turned-photographer Boris Savelev positively glow. Ghostly and melancholic, often taken at dawn or dusk, they “do something magical with light,” says longtime friend and the show’s curator, Adam Lowe. Savelev has been exhibited alongside Nan Goldin in the past, a kinship that’s tangible in the way Savelev trains a deeply empathetic eye on the grimy urban textures he’s drawn to. “So many of these are images that seem to be taken from the gutter, but actually they’re star gazing,” says Lowe. “They’re generous, giving images.”

This is Savelev’s largest retrospective to date, encompassing a six-decade career from Leica to digital, from his hometown of Chernivtsi, to the Soviet Union, and now as a refugee in Vigo, Spain, post the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Together they tell a layered story of social and political convulsion: “When I first met Boris in ‘95, the world was changing and it felt so optimistic,” Lowe says. “The Berlin Wall was down, suddenly there was a flow and a mix, people were communicating and Boris was travelling to Madrid or London or New York. And then in 2014, when Crimea was invaded, something starts to happen with the shadows in his photographs – a feeling of optimism has gone.” But Savelev’s quicksilver instinct for an image remains intact – he doesn’t like his subjects to notice him before the shutter clicks: “When he’s out photographing, it’s like a performance,” says Lowe. “You see him walking along the street and suddenly he’ll feel various things coming together and it’s almost like a dog picking up a scent; his whole body language changes and he’ll be off.”

Viewfinder: A Way of Looking is at El Espacio Cultural Serreria Belga in Madrid, as part of PHotoESPAÑA until July 14.

PHotoESPAÑA is on until September 29.

Late last year we announced our latest initiative with Rabanne to find the next generation of visionaries in digital image-making. Titled ‘Arts Factory’, the programme aims to provide a platform for the finalists to showcase their craft for the chance to work with Rabanne on an exciting project at the end of this year.

Out of an impressive pool of applicants from all across the world, only a few creatives were selected. To carefully deliberate through the portfolios, we formed an expert panel featuring Jefferson Hack, Julien Dossena, Venus Lau, and Claude Adjil. The six finalists include Alice Bucknell, Lorenzo Risani, Elizabeth O’Brien, Buse Simon, Lola Moniz, and Lucy Ellis. Ranging across different forms of multimedia, their specialities vary from merging traditional and digital art practices to using technological advancements as a means of storytelling – while also critiquing what the rapid evolution of current tech means for art and culture as a whole today.

As an extension of the project, Rabanne has just announced its partnership with Art Basel. On June 12th, judges Jefferson Hack and Julien Dossena will be joined by the director of Art Basel Paris, Clément Delépine, for a panel discussion. In addition to that, towards the end of the year, the winner(s) of the Rabanne Arts Factory will have the chance to showcase their work at Art Basel in Miami Beach.

Below we get to know the finalists, as well as the judges who selected them.

Alice Bucknell is an LA-based artist, writer, and educator pushing boundaries at the intersection of gaming and art. Recently, they’ve been crafting cinematic universes within game worlds, delving into the emotional landscapes of video games to unpack different ideas around complex systems, relationships, and knowledge forms. Bucknell also runs ‘New Mystics’ and serves on the faculty at SCI-Arc, helping to shape the next wave of digital art and architecture.

LOLA MONIZ

Artist Lola Moniz specialises in movement, tapping into a fusion of virtual realms with physical scenographies. Her art practice weaves multimedia narratives through writing, editing, video, and scenography. Currently, she’s pursuing a master’s in Fashion with a Focus on Image, Media, and Editorial at Duperré School in Paris, blending rising tech with tangible traditional storytelling.

BUSE SIMON

Buse Simon, also known as BUSESART, is a London-based technical 3D artist specialising in ‘Unreal Engine 5’ – a 3D creational tool. Collaborating with global brands and artists like Chris Avantgarde, ARTBAT, and KAS, she’s also an Unreal Engine Fellowship alum and part of the Epic Dev Community. As an Unreal Engine Instructor for the ARCHI-Metaverse-PRO Advanced Modelling & Game Design Class and a Production Designer at Populous London, she’s honed her expertise in real-time procedural design pipelines. BUSEART’s work includes developing virtual assistants and creating immersive 3D characters, animations, and environments.

LORENZO RISANI

Born in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy, in 2000, Lorenzo Risani is a multimedia artist working with photography, video, sound, sculpture, and 3D modelling. He initially studied Biology at the University of Pisa but shifted to art after winning a scholarship to Istituto Marangoni, where he now studies Multimedia Arts in Florence. Lorenzo’s art journey began in 2016 after a workshop with photographer Marco Quinti, leading to exhibitions such as Le farfalle non devono essere toccate (2017), Flash in Romania (2018) and most recently Visionary Minds #2 (2023). Currently, Lorenzo is preparing installations for the upcoming Istituto Marangoni Firenze Graduation Show.

ELIZABETH O’BRIEN

Elizabeth O’Brien’s artistic practice blends digital animation and sculpture to explore contemporary, digital environments. Her work often critiques the current relentless advancement of technology and its capitalist ties, questioning the boundaries between technology and nature by merging woodwork with digital software. Highly Influenced by ideas of post-humanism, Simon O’Sullivan’s Fictioning and thinkers like Deborah Levitt and Donna Haraway, O’Brien creates objects that reimagine anthropocentric narratives. In her work with Collective Hysteria – a multidisciplinary collective –  her digital avatars challenge traditional gallery spaces, broadening accessibility and confronting gendered social structures.

LUCY ELLIS

Lucy Ellis is an experimental animator in her final year of BA Fine art with Creative Computing. Her work blurs the lines between digital and analogue, using scrap and found materials to craft new identities and narratives. Texture plays a crucial role in her practice, helping to evoke different memories. Ellis’s innovative approach repurposes materials, transforming their original purpose into something entirely new. With a keen eye for process and materiality, her animations explore the ephemeral nature of existence, creating an immersive experience that resonates deeply with her viewers.

JEFFERSON HACK, JULIEN DOSSENA, VENUS LAU AND CLAUDE ADJIL

For the judging process, four industry experts joined forces to find the next generation of talent, including Dazed co-founder and CEO Jefferson Hack. Since founding Dazed in the early 1990s, Hack has gone on to launch many iconic titles including AnOther, Another Man, Nowness, Dazed Beauty, and the innovative Dazed Studio. Known for its trailblazing stories, Dazed Media spans print, digital, and video, continuously shaping the cultural zeitgeist. 

Hack was joined by Julien Dossena. Launching his fashion journey at Paris’ École d’Arts Appliqués Duperré, Dossena went on to work at Balenciaga under Nicolas Ghesquière’s wing, quickly rising to the role of senior designer by 2008. Today, he brings his unique touch to Paco Rabanne, skillfully blending the brand’s rich artisanal legacy with contemporary sensibilities, offering fresh interpretations that embody the label’s signature blend of sensual allure and grounded sophistication.

Elsewhere, another judge included Venus Lau, director of Jakarta’s Museum MACAN, who previously led artistic initiatives at Modern (Meta) Media Group and K11 Art Foundation. Her curatorial prowess is evident in exhibitions like Katharina Grosse’s Mumbling Mud and Simon Denny’s Real Mass Entrepreneurship. At Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, she curated acclaimed shows featuring artists like Ming Wong and Haegue Yang.

The final judge is Claude Adjil. Based in London, Adjil is the current curator-at-large at the Serpentine where she has been the brain behind exhibitions such as Grace Wales Bonner: A Time for New Dreams (2019), Arthur Jafa: RHAMESJAFACOSEYJAFADRAYTON (2022) and Steve McQueen: Grenfell (2023). Alongside her work at the Serpentine, Adjil also works as a curator for the Aspen Art Museum.