Photography Collection

Photo: Ferdinando Scianna

The Spanish Ministry of Culture and PHotoEspaña open Encuentros PHE: VII Debates on Photography, which will take place at the Ministry of Culture’s Auditorium (C/ San Marcos 40, Madrid) from 4 to 6 June. In this edition, the programme will be run by photographer Ferdinando Scianna (Italy, 1943) and the writer Antonio Anson (Spain, 1960) and it will tackle the relationship between photography and literature.


The objective of this edition is to show the way that images and texts interact from a creation point of view, having a bearing on the crucial roll of photography in the formation of modern literature voices. The XX Century has been the age of image and photography is, without doubts, the medium of expression that best embodies contemporary modernity. A lot has been written on the relation of the cinema with the literature and its mutual influence, and very little on the key role of photography in the configuration of the modern world. Not a single medium of expression has been more present in the art and, above all, from portrait to the family album, the books of trips, the medicine, the politics or the police control, all they linked to the literary fiction. Photography implied a new vision of the world, transformed the art and modified the literary styles feeding new kinds as the poem in prose, or stylistic resources like the monolog or the narrative fragmentation. Contrary to what it comes being repeated, photography shares with the word more communicative resources that with the remainder of the visual arts.

Encuentros PHE will gather international experts like Claude Ambroise, professor, critic and translator; Roberto Ando, writer and cinema, opera and theater director; Antonio Anson, writer; Jan Baetens; poet and researcher of the Universite Catholique de Louvain; Alberto Bianda, graphic designer and image/text specialist; Federico Campbell, writer; Paul Edwards, researcher of the Universite Paris VII; Alberto Garcia-Alix, photographer; Marianne Hirsch, researcher of the Columbia University; Gerard Mace, poet; Philippe Ortel, researcher of the Universite de Toulouse; Jane M. Rabb, researcher of The New School; Ferdinando Scianna, photographer; and Silvana Turzio, specialist in criminology speech and professor of the Universita di Milano.

Further information in www.mcu.es/promoArte/ and www.phe.es/encuentros