"Maridajes" with photography

The 32nd edition of the Maridajes cycle features the exhibition Week-End, a project by the Valencian photographer Gala Font de Mora.

Gala Font de Mora (Valencia, 1989) combines her professional work in photography and video with a highly sensitive personal artistic practice with a strong documentary character. Her project Week-End, developed from 2019 onwards, has been recognized by international media such as The Guardian and The Washington Post, and awarded by LensCulture in the Street Photography Awards.

Week-End explores five of the six drive-in cinemas that still remain active in Spain. Through a cinematographic aesthetic, the project seeks to make these almost forgotten spaces visible, places unknown to most people, whose memory is usually associated with films from other times and with American culture. Far from being a simple documentary record, the series proposes an evocative gaze at these settings that are on the verge of disappearing.

The author portrays the corners of the drive-ins, the diversity of their spectators and the singular atmosphere of these venues, often located in coastal landscapes where vegetation grows freely. Font de Mora underlines the relationship between the spectator and the screen, capturing the expressions and gestures of the audience inside the cars, in that intimate microcosm that is formed during the screening. Week-End also speaks of suspended time, of the collective ritual of watching films from the car and of the peculiar coexistence between the public and the private in these spaces.

From November 15, 2025 to May 15, 2026.
© Gala Font de Mora

The exhibition Los Salazar is a photographic essay carried out by Adriana López Sanfeliu over 7 years.

Adriana López Sanfeliu (Barcelona, 1976) is a photographer and filmmaker. Her documentary practice is characterized by a deep exploration of communities that are difficult to access, establishing long-term relationships that allow for an intimate and personal perspective. This commitment to a prolonged approach brings nuances that transform the results of her photography.

Los Salazar is a photographic essay made over 7 years that intimately captures the multifaceted roles of women in Roma culture. In particular, Los Salazar explores their roles as daughters, wives and mothers within the framework of a traditional family. They are, in the end, the guarantee of cohesion in a world that constantly threatens their cultural difference. The transitions that these women experience within the Roma community are, in themselves, an unusual phenomenon in our constantly changing society.

The photographic treatment of Los Salazar prioritizes a practice of photography as a device of collaboration and not of appropriation. The Roma community has historically been subjected to a visual exploitation that the author felt had to be left behind when living with and photographing the members of the Salazar family.

From January 29, 2025 to October 31, 2025.
© Adriana López Sanfeliu

This exhibition immerses us in the concept of synanthropy, defined as the capacity of some species of flora and fauna to adapt to new environmental conditions, especially those created or modified by human activity. Through the lens of Txema Salvans, we explore this phenomenon with an intimate and revealing approach.

The landscape presented to us is that of storks, symbols of adaptation and resistance, struggling to survive amid the degradation of their habitats. The photographs of Txema Salvans invite us to reflect on our collective responsibility. They show us the inheritance and legacy we are leaving to future generations, as well as the urgency of rethinking our relationship with the environment.

In the end, Synanthropy reminds us that these images speak about us, about our inheritance and legacy, about that dystopia in which we have settled, so that this journey through the lens of Txema Salvans may perhaps inspire us to take action, to reimagine a future where the coexistence between humanity and nature is harmonious and sustainable.

From June 25, 2024 to January 26, 2025.
© Txema Salvans

The exhibition From the Window shows the work of 20 photographers, men and women.
The show revolves around one of the most recurrent and beloved themes for photographers: the window. It is no coincidence that the first photograph in history (taken by Niépce in 1826, after eight hours of exposure to light) was precisely a shot from the window of the photographer’s house.

The window is an element that fascinates photographers because it unconsciously proposes the parallel between the lens (a window that projects the light into the camera obscura) and the window itself as an opening from which we look out, protected in the camera obscura of our homes. Most photographers dream of being invisible and, therefore, by sheltering themselves behind the window, they have that privileged point of view from which to observe without being seen.

The 18 photographers from the Foto Colectania Collection who take part in this exhibition present images from different periods, contexts and styles, showing their fascination with windows and surprising us with their gazes through and upon this element so present in our lives.

The authors are: Manel Armengol, Vari Caramès, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Toni Catany, Gal·la Font de Mora, Ferran Freixa, Alberto García-Alix, Cirstina Gracía Rodero, Paco Gómez, Juande Jarillo, Manolo Laguillo, Fernando Lemos, Rita Magalhães, Ramon Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Cèsar Ordóñez, Carlos Pérez Siquier, José Ronco, Gervasio Sánchez and Rafael Sanz Lobato.

From September 27, 2023 to June 10, 2024.
© Manolo Laguillo

The exhibition Jean-Marie del Moral. Portraits of artists offers a look at the extensive portrait work of the Spanish-French photographer, who has always been fascinated by capturing painters and sculptors in their studios.

Jean-Marie del Moral’s career as a professional photographer and contributor to prestigious French newspapers had a turning point at the end of the 70s when he visited Joan Miró’s studio. This brief but intense encounter sparked a passion that he has maintained to this day: portraying painters and sculptors in that magical sphere of creation that their studios are.

Del Moral began by visiting Spanish creators of the generation of exile, both in Paris and in Spain (maintaining a friendship with some of them), and later expanded his repertoire to contemporary creators from all over the world. Among them, it is worth highlighting the ongoing follow-up he has maintained with Miquel Barceló over several decades, an unusual fact in the history of photography and possibly the most intense photo essay on an artist’s biography.

The photographer’s strategy when entering the studios seems simple: not to distort, not to invade that personal space and, at the same time, to be quick in order to seize the small window of time in which the sitter opens up and trusts. Along with these virtues, the capture of these unique images has a lot to do with his admiration for creators who offer him the opportunity to access their most intimate territory.

From January 19, 2023 to September 26, 2023.
© Jean Marie del Moral

The 27th edition of the Maridajes cycle, entitled “Based on Real Stories”, offers a new look at the holdings of the Foto Colectania collection, with photographs by Manel Armengol, Javier Campano, Carlos Cánovas, Jean-Marie del Moral, Cristina García Rodero, Francisco Gómez, Juande Jarillo, Fernando Lemos, Isabel Muñoz, César Ordóñez, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Txema Salvans, Gervasio Sánchez, Rafael Sanz Lobato, Luiz Simôes and Ricard Terré.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the stories behind the photographs, those that are often not explained and that on this occasion take on greater prominence in order to show the viewer an intentionality that often goes unnoticed. The selected images, accompanied by new contextualizations and, on occasions, by the testimony of the photographers themselves, seek to give new meanings and greater depth to the photographs.

From July 27, 2022 to January 13, 2023.
© Juande Jarillo

The 26th edition of the Maridajes cycle, entitled “Realities and Fictions”, brings together the resonance between two authors who have much in common: Joan Fontcuberta and Cristina de Middel.

The series that we present in Maridajes number 26, Sputnik by Joan Fontcuberta and Afronautas by Cristina de Middel, constitute—for both authors—one of their most emblematic works. Both of them play at provoking the viewer with the aim of arousing doubt about the truthfulness of the stories they illustrate (based on real stories) and, in parallel, they question the supposed objectivity of photography.

For Fontcuberta, Sputnik was one of the great moments of his career (his fiction ended up being accepted as true by the public and the media); for de Middel, Afronautas was the dazzling beginning of her creative work. Both masterfully employ visual impact and the reflection that their images provoke in us.

From December 15, 2021 to May 31, 2022.
© Cristina de Middel

This new exhibition of photographs from the Foto Colectania collection is a visual proposal that shows us water in its different appearances—rain, the sea, rivers, glaciers or clouds, etc.—as part of its life cycle and as the origin and vehicle of our survival. Its constant presence in our lives is possibly one of the reasons why it appears represented in numerous photographs in a more or less intentional way on the part of the authors.

In some of the photographs in this show, water is presented in a direct way, becoming almost the protagonist of the shot; in other cases, it appears merged with the scene, showing how we relate to different environments. The diversity of the proposals leads us to value its importance and, probably, to become more aware of its fragility.

The exhibition is an invitation to discover this natural element through photography and to verify that contemplating water always provokes in us a renewed fascination.

The exhibition includes photographs by: Manel Armengol, Vari Caramés, Gabriel Cualladó, José Miguel de Miguel, Joan Fontcuberta, Alberto García-Alix, Francisco Gómez, Inês Gonçalves, Jorge Guerra, Juande Jarillo, Chema Madoz, Xavier Miserachs, Nicolás Muller, César Ordóñez, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Joana Pimentel, Leopoldo Pomés, Beatriz Romero, José Ronco and António Martín Sena da Silva.

From March 15, 2021 to November 30, 2021.
© Juande Jarillo

The exhibition “Traces” brings together a group of photographs made by three of the contemporary photographers with the greatest resonance in our country: José Guerrero, Simona Rota and Carlos Spottorno. Despite having very different careers and starting points, we wanted to bring together their most emblematic series in this new instalment of “Maridajes”. From very different geographical spheres, each proposal shows spaces empty of human presence but full of clues that make us think about how we relate to our environment and the traces we leave on the landscape.

From José Guerrero we present his poetic images of New York, which show us a city whose inhabitants are not seen directly but through the profusion of lights in its skyscrapers. In Ostalgia by Simona Rota we find vestiges of the architecture promoted by the former Soviet Union in its 15 republics between the 1960s and 1990s. The series is constituted as a subjective catalogue of monumental buildings that seem to bear witness to heroic intentions of a past, but that reach the present distilling a certain eroded optimism.

Finally, the photographs of China Western by Carlos Spottorno offer us an intense journey through the Chinese region of Xinjiang, in the northwest of the country, one of the most sparsely populated regions of the People’s Republic, with twenty million inhabitants over an area of more than one and a half million square kilometres.

From January 24, 2020 to January 31, 2021.
© Simona Rota

The impulse of photographers to travel and show us new realities that go beyond what is closest to us, what is already known, has been a constant since the invention of the medium. In this sense, photography, as a tool capable of recording and documenting the world, has fascinated photographers who have travelled the world with the intention of revealing to us places and situations that escape our most immediate reality.

At a time when both travelling and photographing are more accessible options for everyone, and just as the writer Paul Bowles pointed out when speaking about travel literature, it is the personal relationship of the authors with what they have around them that adds value to their accounts. In this sense, the emphasis shifts from the place itself to the effect that these have on the person who writes or, in this case, photographs.

Beyond the diversity of places and times shown by the photographic series in this exhibition, there is a shared attitude and an intimate gaze on the part of the authors who create them.

In this way, Manel Armengol’s photographs from the late nineteen-seventies reveal to us a country that at that time was closed to the outside, strange and unknown, which the author shows us from his most personal viewpoint. With an approach that recalls that of oral tales from the oriental tradition, Jordi Esteva’s photographs allow us to traverse the mysterious island of Socotra, in which the author accompanies the grandson of the last sultan, the young Ahmed, through landscapes that seem more literary than real. From a similarly close perspective, José Ramón Bas shows us a different view of Senegal, which flees from stereotypes in order to show us, through technically manipulated snapshots, the most tender side of this country. For her part, the young photographer Inês Gonçalves has travelled to former Portuguese colonies such as Goa or Cape Verde, producing forceful black-and-white portraits of their inhabitants.

Finally, the photographs of Paolo Nozolino, another author whose biography and works are intimately linked, show scenes taken in Morocco or Egypt that stand out for a dramatic use of light that brings us closer to a mental state rather than a purely geographical one.

From July 29, 2019 to December 15, 2019.
© Jordi Esteva

This exhibition brings together a selection of authors for whom photography is an essential tool for narrating their own experience. Unlike documentary photography and the attempt to represent external reality, the photographers who are part of this show propose a much more intimate and poetic gaze, demonstrating how photographs that start from the personal can be a means of giving free rein to the imagination of those who look at them.

In “Autobiographies” we find a selection of works by Vari Caramés which, with an apparently fleeting language, refer us to atmospheres that may end up feeling strangely close to us. From the renowned Portuguese photographer Jorge Molder, who has built his work around himself, we show images from his series “A Small World”, where the artist himself ends up being the protagonist of his photographs. In the case of Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, the exhibited photographs refer to his closest surroundings in order to show us what the author considers “the deepest part of ourselves”.

The show finally includes a group of works by a new generation of photographers, such as Catarina Botelho, who photographs intimate moments that awaken suggestive stories in the viewer, or Aleix Plademunt, who starts from his own physical existence to lead

From December 21, 2018 to July 14, 2019.
© Aleix Plademunt

The exhibition “Hands” shows the ability of around twenty photographers to portray the language of gestures through hands. The photographs reflect what hands represent in different situations, from possession to vital becoming. In some of the snapshots, the hands are the only protagonists; in others, they accompany faces or become a subtle detail of the composition. Ultimately, through this exhibition, hands make up a polyphony of fleeting gestures.

The photographs by Chema Madoz, the hand self-portraits by Alberto García-Alix, the forceful details of Nicolás Muller, Gabriel Cualladó’s predilection for solitary hands, or Joan Fontcuberta’s alphabet, among many others.

From July 2 to December 16, 2018.
© Nicolás Muller

Painting and photography have shared a passionate and close relationship since their beginnings. The constant questioning that is established between both genres has provided an ideal breeding ground for artistic creation. But the creators who use photography also need to revisit the classical canons of painting.

In this selection from the Foto Colectania Collection we see how photographers approach the artistic practice of still life from different perspectives: with the marvellous compositional exercises in style of Toni Catany, Humberto Rivas and Rafael Sanz Lobato; through the strange combinations of elements by Joan Fontcuberta, Chema Madoz and Manuel Vilariño; or with the found still lifes of Ferran Freixa and Manolo Laguillo.

From January 29 to June 17, 2018.
© Toni Catany

The exhibition “Francisco Gómez. Photography of Architecture” presents, through 60 photographs, the author’s affinity for architecture, which began with his collaboration with the magazine Arquitectura. From then on, his photographic practice would diversify enormously, opening up to genres such as architectural photography, reportage, or an incipient urban documentary practice.

Francisco Gómez is one of the photographers who formed part of the intense process of renewal of Spanish photography that took place in the mid-20th century. He also took part in some of the main movements and photographic groups that arose in our country from the 1950s onwards, such as the Afal group, La Palangana or the Madrid School. His career took a turn and gained new momentum when he began collaborating with the magazine Arquitectura in 1959, for which he worked until 1974.

Since 2001, the Paco Gómez Archive has been part of the Foto Colectania collection and is made up of more than 1,000 prints and more than 24,000 negatives.

From June 26 to November 30, 2017.
© Paco Gómez Archive

This new edition seeks to approach typologies, in the field of photography, beyond classification, repetition and difference. The authors in the exhibition are: Manel Armengol, Joan Colom, Joan Fontcuberta, Chema Madoz, Rafael Navarro, César Ordóñez, Jorge Ribalta and Miguel Trillo.

When we talk about typologies we immediately think in terms such as classification, repetition and difference. In the field of photography, the concept of typology was driven by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who in the 1960s photographed industrial plants, water towers and other vernacular architecture in an apparently objective way.

The authors represented in this exhibition coincide in carrying out an exploration in which the repetition of the same thing takes on just as much importance as its variations. Many of the projects have turned into well-known photographic series; and in fact, the deeper meaning of these works is in many cases not achieved through the single image but through the whole. In a way, many of the concepts that define typology, such as the intention to systematize, are a constant in photography, regardless of whether what is portrayed is people, landscapes or objects. Could it be that the photographic act itself, hidden beneath an apparent objectivity and technical production, is an attempt to capture and order the world?

From December 22, 2016 to May 30, 2017.
© Paco Gómez Archive

The group of portraits presented at Bodegas Roda under the title “Face to Face” does not aim to be a survey of the portrait genre in photography, but it does seek to show outstanding examples of Spanish and Portuguese photography from the 1950s to the present day through the collection of the Foto Colectania Foundation. In the exhibition we are enveloped by direct, crossed, provocative or evasive gazes. Alongside them, the strength of bodily gesture communicated by solitary portraits, group portraits and some self-portraits, the photographer’s gaze upon himself.

Each of the photographers in the show, all of them leading figures in Spanish and Portuguese photography of the second half of the 20th century, approaches portraiture from a different point of view.

Participating authors:
Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Francesc Català-Roca, Toni Catany, Gabriel Cualladó, Ricky Dávila, José Miguel de Miguel, Jordi Esteva, Albert Fortuny, Alberto García-Alix, Francisco Gómez, Jorge Guerra, Cristóbal Hara, Oriol Maspons, Xavier Miserachs, Nicolás Muller, Francisco Ontañón, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Leopoldo Pomés, Xavier Ribas, Humberto Rivas, Gervasio Sánchez, Rafael Sanz Lobato, Ricard Terré, Javier Vallhonrat, Virxilio Vieitez.

From June 17 to November 30, 2016.
© Juan Manuel Castro Prieto

The protagonists of this exhibition are four photographers—Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, José Guerrero, Humberto Rivas and Luis Vioque—who, through a selection of thirty photographs, show their different approaches to the theme of landscape.

The works of the four photographers brought together in this exhibition are a small selection of their careers, in which they have delved into this genre from very different perspectives: Juan Manuel Castro Prieto travelled through Peru for many years and immerses us in that society with a serene and analytical gaze; Humberto Rivas does not need to move away from his closest surroundings and, with his patient shots, floods us with melancholy; José Guerrero develops in the Támesis portfolio the difficult exercise of concision and mystery required by short stories; and Luis Vioque plays with technical resources and irony to convey the strange sense of unreality in his landscapes.

From November 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016.
© José Guerrero / VEGAP

Just as in painting and sculpture, abstraction has also been a recurring practice in the history of photography. For many artists, the camera can become a tool capable of revealing aspects of reality that the eye is often not able to see. In this exhibition, we have traced a path in which nine authors from our collection emphasize the more formal and expressive aspects of the photographic image, either through fragmentation and reframing or through experimentation with the essential materials of photography: light and photosensitive paper.

On the one hand, we include authors who have dedicated a large part of their work to abstraction, such as Ton Sirera, one of the pioneers of abstract photography in Spain, and Paco Gómez, a poet of walls, traces and bare spaces. On the other hand, we also find abstraction in numerous authors who, despite not having worked directly on the theme, have indeed created abstract works based on formal compositions and textures. This is the case of Manel Armengol, Ramón Masats, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Xavier Ribas and Humberto Rivas. Lastly, the exhibition includes two works in which the abstract image is achieved through experimentation with the medium itself: the “generations” of Juan Bufill and the “frottograms” of Joan Fontcuberta.

From February 20 to September 20, 2015.
© Cristóbal Hara

In this new edition a selection of works by photographers from different periods and genres has been made in order to show their vision of the feminine universe. Along the route, photographs by Helena Almeida, Manel Armengol, Vari Caramés, Toni Catany, Joan Colom, Gabriel Cualladó, António Júlio Duarte, José Miguel de Miguel, Paco Gómez, Chema Madoz, Ramón Masats, Oriol Maspons, Xavier Miserachs, Nicolás Muller, Isabel Muñoz, Leopoldo Pomés, Humberto Rivas, Rafael Sanz Lobato, Ricard Terré and Javier Vallhonrat can be seen.

The exhibition “In the Feminine” shows us how various photographers have repeatedly turned, whether for pleasure or profession, to showing us the feminine universe in their photographs. There are fields in which this genre has been especially prolific, such as fashion photography. But on this occasion, the aim is to reflect the figure of woman as the central axis of the selection, with photographs taken at different times by authors who are very different from one another.

Throughout the exhibition, the photographs on the wall are presented as a puzzle of images that recalls the curiosity cabinets of the nineteenth century, allowing the viewer to find their own connections.

From July 3, 2014 to November 1, 2014.
© Helena Almeida

In this new edition it is THE CITY that takes centre stage: a setting that has always captivated photographers, from pioneers to amateurs, and that will serve to take the pulse and appreciate their reflections on the singular reality of cities.

The works we present are emblematic series by the photographers, made between the nineteen-sixties and the nineteen-nineties, and also magnificent examples of the different paths of contemporary photography:

Miserachs shows us the vitality of his Barcelona Blanco Negro, a photo-essay that marked the renewal of Spanish photography in the nineteen-sixties; Sanz Lobato, a pioneer of anthropological photography, surprises us with an unpublished reportage, full of energy and intuition, on the barrio chino of Genoa; the touch of colour is provided by Ribas with his celebrated series from the nineteen-nineties Barcelona, which looks at the city from the peripheries with irony; and finally, Manolo Laguillo, who contributes his reflection on architecture and urban changes from a frontal gaze, the central axis of all his work and one that has set a school in our country.

From November 10, 2013 to April 30, 2014.
© Manolo Laguillo

On this occasion, and to conclude the Maridajes exhibition cycle, Foto Colectania has selected pairings of the most representative works by the Spanish and Portuguese photographers who have taken part in the eleven previous editions of the cycle. These photographic pairs, which can be seen from April 19th until the end of October, bring together two authors, generating resonances both between the images represented and between the spirit of both.

Participating photographers: Francesc Català-Roca, Gérard Castello-Lopes, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Joan Colom, Gabriel Cualladó, José Miguel de Miguel, Ferran Freixa, Alberto García-Alix, Cristina García Rodero, Paco Gómez, Inês Gonçalves, Jorge Guerra, Cristóbal Hara, Chema Madoz, Ramón Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Nicolás Muller, Humberto Rivas, Rafael Sanz Lobato, António Martín Sena da Silva, Ricard Terré.

From April 19, 2013 to October 31, 2013.
© Cristina García Rodero

This exhibition brings us closer to the city of San Sebastián in the late nineteen-fifties as seen by Paco Gómez, and to the Lisbon of 1967 through the camera of the Portuguese photographer Jorge Guerra. There are photographers who feel freer photographing other cities than their own, possibly because of that strangeness that telling the everyday produces in us; however, for others, such as Gómez and Guerra, this proximity allows them to bring out an attractive gaze that deepens the understanding of their closest world.

From November 1, 2012 to April 16, 2013.
© Paco Gómez

“Maridajes” is a cycle of exhibitions that the Foto Colectania Foundation has been holding based on its photography collection in the exhibition hall of BODEGAS RODA since May 2007.

The idea is to establish points of contact between the works of two photographers from the Foto Colectania collection, creating a play of resonances that refers to the enriching combination of two elements, like the one obtained by pairing a dish with a glass of wine.

Ramón Masats and Ricard Terré belong to the brilliant generation of photographers who in the nineteen-sixties took part in the renewal of Spanish photography, they themselves from the New Avant-garde movement in Catalonia and others from Almería, Madrid and many other places in Spain. The members of this movement called for a new photography with overflowing energy (almost all of them were very young) and maintained the conviction that photography was an artistic expression with its own codes. The two authors of this exhibition shared many creative principles and a good friendship, which led them to exhibit together from the very beginning, often in the company of Xavier Miserachs. In this exhibition we wanted to highlight the uniqueness of their work, their different photographic perspectives, creating the pairing between two of their most important series: Sanfermines by Ramón Masats and the Semana Santa by Terré. The resonance of their gazes allows us to get closer to the atmosphere of a grey, harsh and at the same time vital era.

From April 15 to September 15, 2012.
© Ricard Terré

The photographers Juan Manuel Castro Prieto and Nicolás Muller were born in different periods and have had different professional careers. Nevertheless, there are many curious coincidences that link them, both personally and professionally. The selection of their photographs in the 9th edition of the Maridajes exhibition cycle, which form part of the Foto Colectania Foundation’s collection, seeks to find common elements between two different settings and ways of looking that reveal the nuances of proximity between these two great creators. Bodegas Roda hosts the finest works of these two photographers through the series “Perú, viaje al sol” by Castro Prieto (Madrid, 1958) and the early works of Muller (Orosháza, 1913 – Andrín, 2000).

From October 20, 2011 to March 31, 2012.
© Juan Manuel Castro Prieto

Despite belonging to two different generations and having diverse personal and professional trajectories, the photographic work of Cristóbal Hara and Rafael Sanz Lobato shares an interest in the same rural sphere. With very different approaches, both authors portray popular rites and traditions of our country. With gazes that are at times opposed—Lobato from a classical perspective with special attention to the depicted event; Hara from his radical style of renewing documentary practice—both photographers have developed a body of work of a very high level.

In this 8th edition of Maridajes, Bodegas Roda hosts some of the best works by these two photographers, exemplified in two series: Lances de aldea by Hara (1985–1989) and Bercianos de Aliste by Lobato (1970–1971).

From April 1, 2011 to September 30, 2011.
© Cristóbal Hara

Through the photographs of António Sena da Silva (Lisbon, Portugal, 1926) and Gérard Castello-Lopes (Vichy, France, 1925), the city of Lisbon of the nineteen-fifties resounds; the carts, the trucks, the trams, the boats reflect the passage of time, but the people who are its protagonists continue to show us that great photographers reflect life a little beyond what is apparent. The freshness of Castello-Lopes shows us the city in its everyday work, its shops, its corners and its people almost always in motion. Sena da Silva, with a larger camera format, ventures, with his high-angle shots and shots over the cobblestones, to show us the dynamism of his city and its surroundings.

From November 13, 2010 to April 13, 2011.
© Gérard Castello-Lopes

In the sixth edition of the Maridajes cycle, the works of photographers Paco Gómez and Chema Madoz come together with a common aim: a fascination with objects. With several decades between them, the works of Gómez and Madoz come together to seek the poetic gaze of photography, inspiring the imagination with very little.

Paco Gómez (Pamplona, 1918) and Chema Madoz (Madrid, 1958) share the same vision of photography. Unlike the work of the photojournalist, both photographers look for imperceptible details that inspire feelings and that, thanks to imagination, tell stories. To do so, it is enough for them to light up the grass, reframe graffiti, find stains on walls and on trench coats or, simply, lean a ladder against a mirror. Always with the serenity of someone who has nothing at stake, despite creating somewhere between the apparent and the brilliant.

From May 4 to October 30, 2010.
© Chema Madoz

In the fifth edition of the Maridajes exhibition cycle, it becomes evident that the photographers Xavier Miserachs and Francesc Català-Roca, besides being good friends, were accomplices in their particular way of positioning themselves towards photography. The life of people in the street was the main source of inspiration for these two indisputable masters of photography of the 1950s and 60s.

Xavier Miserachs and Francesc Català-Roca shared clear aesthetic affinities in their approach to black-and-white photography. Both shared the sobriety in the treatment of natural light and the prominence of the liveliness of street life. The Catalan photographers also called for a renewal of the drab cultural panorama of those decades, which they expressed with all the means they then had at their disposal: through exhibitions, magazines, books and a light-hearted militancy.

From October 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010.
© Francesc Català-Roca

The resonance between the two photographers we have chosen for the latest Maridajes proposal has a very direct parallel: the work of two classics of Spanish photography of the nineteen-sixties around a recurring theme in the trajectory of both, photographs of children. But beyond the subject matter that unites them, Gabriel Cualladó and Miguel de Miguel share the fact of having been great driving forces of Spanish photography in the mid-20th century. In Cualladó’s work, a distilled influence of the international classics stands out, as well as an extraordinary ability for close, direct portraiture. For his part, De Miguel dares, with an uncommon freshness, to work with staged scenes and vindicates a sense of humour.

From March 1 to October 31, 2009.
© José Miguel de Miguel

In the third edition of the “Maridajes” photography exhibition cycle, organized by the Foto Colectania Foundation, the work of Humberto Rivas and Ferran Freixa is presented; they share the same interest in the poetic, in solitary spaces and a similar approach to the treatment of light.

Humberto Rivas and Ferran Freixa have very different life and artistic trajectories; nevertheless, they share the same fascination with spaces frozen in time, with places that seem to be waiting for someone to enter, with corners in which light is the protagonist.

Ferran Freixa (Barcelona, 1950) began in the world of photography in a self-taught way, although in 1969 he became a professional when he opened his own studio, specialized in fashion, industry and advertising. Ten years later he left this field to focus on architecture; it was then that he produced a series of photographs of shops in Barcelona that seem frozen in time: in Galon Glacé, a mannequin looks unflinchingly at the viewer, in an image that evokes the 1920s or 30s but which, in reality, was taken in 1979; something similar happens with another snapshot, Sombrerería Obach, dated that same year but whose plasticity, as well as the use of light and shadows, makes it seem in fact like a hat shop from the 1950s.

In the photographs of Humberto Rivas (Buenos Aires, 1937), time has also stopped: Niña is the image of an old doll; it might seem that the snapshot was taken decades ago, however it is dated 1992. This artist, born in Buenos Aires in 1937, settled in Barcelona in 1976; the images he made in this city have a great parallel with those of Freixa, since both seek the shadowy angle, which sometimes confuses the viewer’s eye. Montmayour, a photo by Rivas from 1993, seems to reflect a phantasmagorical set, just like Freixa’s Illa de Llatzaret (1982). Besides the coincidences on the artistic level, Ferran Freixa and Humberto Rivas are united by a friendship that has allowed them to work and travel together.

From September 1, 2008 to February 28, 2009.
© Humberto Rivas

The work chosen, in a new edition of the exhibition cycle, has been that of Alberto García-Alix and Joan Colom, two artists with different trajectories but whose vision of the world and interpretation of photography have points in common.

Apparently dissimilar and yet very similar in their approach, Alberto García-Alix and Joan Colom are the protagonists of a new edition of the Maridajes exhibition. The idea is to bring together the work of two photographers whose vision of the world and interpretation of the image create a perfect combination, like the one obtained by pairing a dish with a glass of wine. According to Pepe Font de Mora, director of the foundation and curator of the show, both artists share an obsession with capturing life: Alberto García-Alix portrays people with the camera in full view; Joan Colom catches them in the street, while he walks around trying to go unnoticed. Each in his own style, in two very different cities and two different periods—the Madrid of the movida and the Barcelona of the 1950s and 60s, respectively—but with a common thread: the faithful portrait of people just as they are, and the use of black and white.

From February 8 to July 31, 2008.
© Joan Colom

“Maridajes” is a cycle of exhibitions that the Foto Colectania Foundation organizes based on its photography collection.

Points of contact are established between the works of two women photographers from the collection, Cristina García Rodero and Inês Gonçalves, creating a play of resonances that refers to the enriching combination of two elements.

Cristina García Rodero represents seniority, and Inês Gonçalves represents the new Portuguese photography, but both share an interest in travel, the search for light, and the central role of portraiture. García Rodero will present her travel photographs from Spain, Georgia, Poland and Greece, with the common thread of her fascination with children, while Gonçalves’s photographs portray her travels through the former Portuguese colonies of Cape Verde and Goa, as well as her series made in São Tomé.

From May 11 to July 31, 2007.
© Inês Gonçalves