Based on True Stories. Foto Colectania Collection

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Pequeño Hollywood, Tabernas, Almería, 1991 Gelatina de plata sobre papel baritado Copia actual ©Cristina García Rodero / Magnum. Image courtesy of Foto Colectania

Based on True Stories offers a new look at Foto Colectania's collection. The exhibition takes as its starting point the stories behind the photographs: the stories that are often not explained and often go unnoticed. The selected images, accompanied by new contextualizations and sometimes the author's own testimony, aim to give new meaning and greater depth to the photographs.

"It is always difficult to make an exhibition of one's own collection, and especially in our case, in which the collection is made up of more than 3,000 photographs," says Irene de Mendoza, artistic director of Foto Colectania and curator of the exhibition. “For this exhibition," she adds, "we have chosen to organize it in a way that invites the viewer to discover new stories, whether of images they know or photographs they see for the first time, and to complete them with other photographs that they can find on our website. The proposal is an invitation to look again, to delve into the images and discover new stories that are not usually the ones that appear in photography history books.”

Composed of more than a hundred photographs, the images gathered in the exhibition takes the viewer on a journey that runs through four thematic areas. The first, titled "Personal Album," is a series of photographs that shows us an intimate look at the authors, their closest environments and personal experiences.

The next section, "The Other Story of Photographs," is the heart of the show. Here viewers find some of the icons of Spanish photography along with lesser-known works displayed alongside texts that complement them, explaining situations, characters and places portrayed thus adding new meaning for the viewer.

In the third area of ​​the exhibition, "real landscapes" are contrasted with "imagined landscapes," and the limits of what is real and what is imagined are consciously blurred.

In the last section of the exhibition, entitled "Constructed Stories," the selected photographs share various processes of intervention by their authors: either by placing themselves as the subject of the composition, by building still lifes, manipulating and experimenting with the double exhibition or recreating stories.

By scanning QR codes with a mobile device, visitors will be able to connect the exhibited photographs with new images and resources on Foto Colectania's website. This platform will grow over the coming months, in which more content related to the photographs, series and authors of the collection will be incorporated, with the aim of becoming a fundamental resource of contemporary photography in our country.

For more art events check our online events calendar.