Art Madrid'23 – Contact sheets: from Margaret Thatcher to A llama in Times Square

Interview to Ernesto Che Guevara in Cuba, 1963. Photo: Rene Burri / Magnum Photos

 

The exhibition shows the contact sheets of 65 of the most outstanding photographers of the agency. It is the perfect occasion to know the details of the creative process and the selection criteria that these authors follow to launch their final work. That’s why having access to this kind of materials is so difficult because they integrate a fund that photographers keep with much zeal and discretion.

 

 

 

A llama in Times Square, New York, 1957. Photo: Inge Morath / Magnum Photos

 

 

Contact sheets are the first print-outs of the negatives. This material was not born to be disseminated, since it takes part of the inner phases of production, selection and decision-making of the photographer. It is the way to choose the best shot from the printed samples of the raw images. Precisely because of that, they present a huge interest for the photography-lovers.

 

 

Margaret Thatcher, Blackpool, the UK, 1981. Photo: Peter Marlow / Magnum Photos

 

 

The exhibition encompasses a very remarkable sample of this material, by gathering some of the most iconic moments of our recent contemporary history. At the same time, it makes possible to the spectator to know the discarded snaps of some of the images more representative of the best photo-journalist of the agency, what can satisfy many people’s curiosity and allows to know a side always hidden to the public.

 

 

 

Protests in Paris, France, May of 1968. Photo: Bruno Barbey / Magnum Photos

 

 

Contacts sheets are displayed along with the image finally chosen, so as every single photograph shapes a brief story in which we can know its real context, the one of the photographer and of the moment captured. Among the authors included in the showing, we might highlight Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David ‘Chim’ Seymour, Werner Bischof, Marc Riboud, Eve Arnold, René Burri, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Hiroji Kubota, Steve McCurry, Jean Gaumy, Paolo Pellegrin or Cristina García Rodero.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.