Here and Now. Photography in Contemporary Spain
Aquí y Ahora (Here and Now) is a photography exhibition jointly organised by the Instituto Cervantes and the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo AECID (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development). This exhibition comprises thirteen personal representations of themes, both old and new, that define contemporary Spain: immigration, bulls, tourism, water, land, people, housing, marriage, family memory, terrorism, motorbikes, religion and bars.
This project is an initiative of Nophoto, a contemporary, non-conventional, photographers’ collective. The works of Nophoto offer an experimental insight into everyday life that always leads to the extraordinary.
NOPHOTO revisits contemporary Spain, reaching into this intimate place to traverse it, inhabit it, walk through it and settle it. Spain within its geographic and political borders. Fourteen photographers who have preferred not to be tourists, or intrepid reporters, or ironic, who are not seeking a newsworthy event or even truth. At most, they search for honesty. Thirteen projects that kill off the clichés surrounding them and take archetypes by storm using something as simple as the first person.
The exhibition contains thirteen projects undertaken by fourteen members of the group: Matías Costa, Iñaki Domingo, Paco Gómez, Jorquera, Carlos Lujan, Juan Valbuena, Eduardo Nave, Juan Millás, Tanit Plana, Juan Santos, Carlos Sanva, Jonás Bel, Eva Sala and Marta Soul.
Aquí y Ahora is a travelling exhibition and the work has been seen in cities all over Europe, including Vilnius, Tallinn, London, Manchester, Toulouse, Krakow, Stockholm and Minsk.
Founded in 2005, NOPHOTO is a contemporary photography collective that aims to make UNCONVENTIONAL individual and collective projects viable.
The collective is characterised by its open content, an interdisciplinary thread in its forms, the use of multiple supports such as the web and digital projections when distributing projects, and the personal involvement of its members during the creative and production process.
NOPHOTO takes negation as its starting point. NOPHOTO is not an agency of photographers, but an ATTITUDE. A way of seeing. A revolution. A ‘NO’ (where there’s never enough).
This aesthetic attitude makes NOPHOTO not renounce any kind of creation or exhibition. Works by the collective offer an experienced view of the everyday, which always leads to the extraordinary. This process is the result of group reflection and interaction among alternative creative processes.
“It’s not that we like to take the opposing view; it’s that we enjoy walking slowly, clumsily, observing minute differences between things, discovering their rhythms. Trying to describe an object, turn it on its head, comb its surroundings and cover the entire perimeter. Asking ourselves what it’s made of and what role it plays in the story. Demanding of ourselves that we wear the subject out and still haven’t said anything. Demanding of ourselves that we look closely and yet haven’t resolved anything. Not to illustrate, define or take photographs. We like to unphotograph things and unname them.”
Juan Millás / NOPHOTO
NOPHOTO was awarded the Revelación Award 2006 by the PHotoEspaña International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts.
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