- Environment and landscape: The exhibition will be on display from June 2nd to September 4th in the Geneva Rooms of the Royal Palace of Madrid
For the fifth consecutive year, ACCIONA and PHotoESPAÑA have joined forces for the organization of an exhibition dedicated to the environment within the official section of this photography festival.
On this occasion, the exhibition sponsored by ACCIONA is Sebastião Salgado and the Royal Collections – Meetings on landscape photography, which can be seen until September 4th at the Royal Palace in Madrid. This space has been handed over by Spain’s National Heritage agency, which joins the PHotoESPAÑA program for the first time, offering the festival lovers this iconic location, as well as rarely exhibited collections.
The exhibition brings together environment-focused works by Sebastião Salgado, winner of the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, with landscape photographs taken in the 19th century by renowned photographers such as Atkinson, Nadar, Laurent and Clifford, which belong to the Royal Collections of Spain’s National Heritage agency.
Across three rooms, the exhibition begins with this dialogue between Salgado and greatly relevant artists in the history of photography such as Clifford, Laurent, Atkinson and Fazio, one of the most prominent Spanish photographers at the time.
The second room is fully dedicated to Salgado, and it presents the sublime nature portrayed by the photographer, rooted in the primordial elements of creation: air, earth, fire and water.
Twelve of Salgado's images can be seen in this room, four of which have never been exhibited before.
Sebastião Salgado is one of the most prestigious photographers in the world, both for his work as a photojournalist in his early career, and for his unique view of the environment, which has become the focus of his work in recent decades. In 1998 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts.
His early career was concerned with portraying regions stricken by famine and drought, large migrations and people from all over the world at work. In 2004 he initiated the Genesis project, a series of portraits of physical and human landscapes scattered all over the planet, with the aim of documenting the immaculate aspects of nature and humanity.
The third and last room is conceived as a 19th-century cabinet with images by more than 30 artists, where parallels in their approach to nature can be seen. All their gazes, however distant in time, share a homage to pure nature.
ACCIONA AND PHOTOESPAÑA
Sebastião Salgado and the Royal Collections – Meetings on landscape photography is the result of the collaboration between ACCIONA and PHotoESPAÑA, which have already carried out other joint projects that artistically reflect the key challenges our society faces, such as climate change (in the case of the S.M.A.R.T photographic and audiovisual exhibition, which was one of the main activities of the 2019 festival), or the fight against COVID-19, which led both organizations to collaborate on promoting the #PHEdesdemibalcón contest in the virtual edition of the 2020 festival.
Last year, ACCIONA and PHotoESPAÑA organized the "We are Water" exhibition by Isabel Muñoz, which was displayed at the Lázaro Galdiano museum and became one of the most visited exhibitions of the festival.
ACCIONA has made this exhibition possible as further confirmation of its support for the preservation and dissemination of culture through the lens of sustainability. The company, a leader in regenerative solutions to design a better planet, sees culture as a fundamental element to generate a positive impact on people and the planet.
PHotoESPAÑA is a photography festival that has been held annually in Madrid since 1998 and has become an international benchmark in the visual arts, for the quality of the works and artists in its official section, as well as for the cultural initiatives it promotes to promulgate the cultural and aesthetic value of photography in society.