Dreams

Other worlds. Over the course of three years this will be the departure point for a selection of photographers’ work which will be essentially shown in the public space of Getxo. The watchword is Other worlds because the photographers’ gaze suggests unknown universes that surprise and disturb us due to the permanent tension between elements of reality that we recognise, and formal organisations we consider impossible because they no longer match our experience or our way of looking and seeing.

This title, which lets us stay on safe ground, will unfold in three stages, the first of which is the Dream phase. This constitutes the first of all mental and virtual images, even before we conceive forms in association with what they are supposed to represent. The dream is a unique, individual, singular experience that takes on a wide and surprising variety of forms in accordance with the individuals, periods, cultures or social mediums involved. And we certainly always dream that we are different from what we are. Through its power to reveal profound mental structures, dream is also a fantasised way of transforming oneself into another. An elusive and often impossible double, made of desires and forebodings, original fears and deep yearnings. A space that may house revolution or a return to normality. We dream both of impossible futures and of reencounter with the past. In so doing we invest dreams with qualities of premonition or refuse to recall them.

These immaterial images that pursue us are clearly a paradox when we wish to make them the central subject of our programme: we ask photographers to show us what’s not visible. It was easy to come up with the challenge but so hard to carry out the selection procedure for it. For today’s photographers –when the fundamental objective of still images backed by a tradition covering nearly two centuries is no longer to document or to represent the world- dream worlds are familiar, assert their identity, exhibit their fantasies, unveil their innermost natures. In the same way, they make use of the technical evolutions that, projecting the photograph within a world of images, enable them to free themselves from the contingencies of the real to declare that what is essential is their point of view, their emotion, sensibility, and position vis-à-vis the world.

Despite risking apparent contradictions we have tried to chart the plastic extension and conception of photography today, ranging from document to pure game at the limits of illustration, from commitment to aesthetic investigation. So we intermingle multiple writings, each with their different features, confronting the complexity of our contemporary surroundings. All these writings carry different references, shaped by their background training or affinities: photography perhaps; cinema indubitably; sometimes drawing; and often literature and poetry. As proof of its maturity, photography sees itself no more as a besieged fortress that must demonstrate its status as “art”. It dialogues with all spheres of contemporary creation as the only way of situating itself and of possessing an intelligible discourse.

We wanted these images to come from all over the world. They do not fully tap the expanse of the planet, but they break with the ethnocentrism that for so long reserved recognition in this field for Europeans and Americans. But beware of seeing works as “good” because they come from elsewhere; we are not chasing the exotic, the typical, or the exemplary. Our aim is simply to communicate that the local, when best expressed, is absolutely universal.

These images from far or near will exist in public space, and that is the heart of the matter. The place from where they are to be read –often only by a minority– ought to make sense. We are fully aware that we are using these artistic works as an offering to the general public, as a stimulus to emotion and thought, and in order to surprise and spread knowledge too. Leaving standard exhibition frames out of the picture, the results dispense with conventions and perhaps, also, pretensions. They are perceived from the outset through an immediate visual impact. They must engage with us and should call up other voices within us. Dreams, maybe. With their accompanying elusive complexity.

Christian Caujolle

A recognised critic and eminent curator, Christian Caujolle has made an enormous contribution to the world of photography. He collaborated with and was a pupil of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Roland Barthes. He was the graphics editor of Libération, founder of the Agence VU', artistic director of Les Rencontres d'Arles and curated international festivals such as the Foto Biennale in Rotterdam and PhotoEspaña. Since 1983 he has organised several exhibitions and edited monographs on artists including Jacques Henri Lartigue, William Klein, Anders Petersen, Raymond Depardon, Michael Ackerman and Cristina García Rodero. Caujolle has participated in workshops and conferences in many countries in Europe and Asia and served as a jury member for World Press Photo and other prestigious international competitions. Currently he is the director of PhotoPhnomPenh in Cambodia and in 2013 he took over as curator of Getxophoto Image Festival.