La Jornada: Mexico provides PhotoEspaña with a melting pot of views on migration

The perspective of Mexican photographers Alejandro Cartagena, Noboru Yurugi López and Juan Glassford is present in the 29th edition of PhotoEspaña, which runs from today until September 13 with the motto Reimagine. With more than 100 exhibitions, the meeting has become a space for creativity and experimentation for lens artists.

“It is a great privilege to exhibit alongside other artists that I admire so much in the official section of the festival,” he shared with The Day Juan Glassford, who comes to this meeting thanks to the scholarship awarded by the Master PhotoEspaña, an academic program that selects two guests each year.

Glassford defines himself as a documentary photographer who works from the perspective of “docufiction.” “I don’t think of my photography as an index of truth, but as a mix between what is real and what is personal.”

He shoots in black and white and his obsession is the theme of identity. “I am Mexican-American. The road allows me to travel through places where very few people go and learn about peculiar realities, and through them reconcile with myself, with those two identities,” he indicated.

The artist has driven several times from New York to the border with Mexico – Mississippi, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas – and from there to Oaxaca, where he entered into community celebrations, mayordomías, jaripeos. “It is a silent work that attempts to document from a transit space,” he added.

He commented that his process is largely due to intuition. “I grab the car and start driving without knowing where I’m going. There are times I end up in another state. Other days I arrive at the corner of my house. It’s part of the magic. Photographing puts me in a zen state.”

For Glassford, his participation in this meeting confirms that “Mexican artistic narrative is very powerful and this is reflected throughout the world. I am glad that Spain is not the exception and I believe that Mexicans always make a good impression.”

In an environment in which global photography seeks new narratives and perspectives, the presence of Mexican artists reinforces the geographical and conceptual diversity of the meeting, providing views that dialogue with universal problems.

Faced with contemporary visual saturation, the festival focuses on photographic creativity, experimentation and exploration of the limits of these works. Reimagining vindicates curiosity and rebellion as tools to question reality, the authority of the image and its modes of production.

Projection space

For new artists, PhotoEspaña is a space for projection, change and construction of the future. The festival thus takes on the challenge of strengthening bridges towards young audiences and rethinking what an event dedicated to image in the 21st century means today.

Juan Glassford commented that one of his references in his work is Graciela Iturbide. “She supported me from a very young age and opened many doors for me”; He also mentioned Manuel Álvarez Bravo because “he has influenced all contemporary photography.”

He added that part of his work reflects his own migration as a Mexican-American artist, “from a much more personal place.” He considered that migration “is a symptom of a world in imbalance and, as Mexico is a transit country, it affects us all.”

Glassford, Cartagena and Noboru present different perspectives that dialogue. Regarding the work of his colleagues, he indicated: “Alejandro’s work is all in color, mine and Noboru’s almost exclusively in black and white. Cartagena deals with migration in a more direct way and Noboru uses the newspaper a lot. They are works that complement and enrich each other.”

The Mexican Alejandro Cartagena, born in the Dominican Republic, presents at PhotoEspaña Ground Rulesan exhibition that covers more than two decades of his career and that proposes a critical reading of the complex social, economic and territorial realities of Mexico, addressing topics such as migration, housing, the border and urban transformation from a serial and multifocal perspective.

The 29th edition of PhotoEspaña brings together names such as Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Colita and Isabel Muñoz, among others. In addition, it proposes a route that goes through different periods, views and themes in the main cultural institutions of the city of Madrid.