To Share

Getxophoto's fifteenth anniversary comes at a time when it is essential to accept and explore a global, interdependent model of society. Climate change and the pandemic have encouraged planetary awareness that includes the dangers and benefits that come with extractive systems of production and consumption, the development of transport and the expansion of communication technology. Access to information and large migrant flows have allowed for cultures to reach closer understanding and establish new collective goals, but at the same time they have also uncovered growing economic inequalities, ideological prejudices and reactionary policies. In this scenario, in which the challenges posed by an interdependent society are increasingly evident and urgent, the Getxophoto 2021 programme aims to explore what sharing means.

To participate or to distribute are some of the meanings of the verb to share that have been a fundamental part of the aim of Getxophoto since its birth as an international festival based at local level. The pioneering interactive Getxoweb map created by the Agirregabiria de la Sen family in 1996 and the self-published Getxoko albumak (Getxo albums) distributed in the town by Begoña Salazar are two proposals that focus on the generous creative wealth of the people of Getxo. Both works are part of Getxo's cultural heritage, which deserves to be preserved and shared with audiences from different times and places.

Photography has been a fundamental tool for documenting the history of countless communities, bringing cultures from all over the world closer together, and it is a process which has also incorporated the biases and prejudices that inevitably form part of every gaze. The questioning of the narratives that have prevailed in the representation of identity is precisely the aim of the Bolivian photographer River Claure in Warawar wawa, in which he suggests an alternative, mestizo vision of the Andes that responds to the preponderant western preconception of folklore. The exploration of new representations of identity –which go beyond the legal and ideological limits that society imposes on queer migrant people– is the starting point of Leonard Suryajaya's False Idol. This is a project in which his family and loved ones actively collaborated, and family relationships, especially affected by the restrictions caused by the pandemic, often influence the way we interact with others. A Blurry Aftertaste by Eleonora Agostini looks at the roles that each member adopts within the domestic space, exploring the tensions generated in this precarious balance of power. A close but even more intimate proposal is that proposed by both Juno with Las dos hebras and Lebohang Kganye with Ke Lefa Laka, who explore the reflections of their own identities, the former in the features shared with her twin sister, and the latter with the images of her deceased mother.

Collaborative work processes are especially relevant when it comes to preserving the capacity for self-representation of people subjected to traumatic experiences. An example of this are activist projects such as Now You See Me Moria, where the terrible living conditions of refugees locked up in the European camp of Moria are shared and denounced on social networks, exhibitions and actions. In the same way, the publication Recetario para la memoria (Recipe Book for Remembrance) by Zahara Gómez Lucini and the search group Las Rastreadoras del Fuerte shows the search for tens of thousands of missing people organised by their relatives in response to the apathy of the Mexican government, and allows people to support this initiative financially by buying the cookbook.

People who have experienced episodes of extreme violence often suffer both the psychological consequences and the stigma that surround mental illness. Sharing their traumatic experiences can become a therapeutic tool, a strategy that It’s all in my Head by Etinosa Yvonne implements using the testimonies of survivors of terrorist attacks in Nigeria. However if, on the contrary, situations of abuse or violence are exercised by people or organizations in power, publicizing them can have terrible consequences for those who put their principles first. This is a reality that Hoda Afshar documents in Agonistes, where people employed by Australian government agencies describe both the events and the consequences their complaints have led to.

The narrow border that used to separate the public and private spheres has been further eroded since the integration of the Internet into daily tasks. The home, a space of intimacy and privacy par excellence, has become a public stage. Even before the lockdown brought with it the implantation of remote life and its broadcast on the Internet, living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms were already shared in the photographs that Penelope Umbrico collects in her TVs from Craigslist project. The artist makes a large collage of the involuntary reflections that appear on second-hand televisions for sale on the Internet, which in turn allow a glimpse of their owners’ homes. Sebastian Schmieg shows precisely the opposite with Gallery.Delivery, an exhibition delivered by a delivery man who, far from being anonymous and staying at the door, enters, installs and presents the works to the inhabitants of the house, making the precarious work that these riders carry out every day visible.

The online circulation of what is intimate can be complex and paradoxical due to the design that the attention economy demands of social networks and messaging platforms, where production and circulation of content is encouraged at all costs. On one hand, they feed paranoia and the culture of fear in neighbourhood watch chats such as those explored by Blanca Munt in Alerta vecino! (Neighbour Alert!), while, on the other, they incite a cult of the uninhibited, digitally transfigured body and present it online. The entries Enjoy House by Shelli Weiler and Fotollamada (Photocall) by Andrea Muniáin explore some of the spaces created for the production of images on the Internet, in the form of a documentary series in the former, and as a participatory installation in the latter. Digitization not only reaches the physical and tangible, but is also very present in the abstract and ideological, where the meme wars on which the work Online Culture Wars by the Disnovation.org collective focuses are shown in the struggles for dominance of the political narrative on social media. The effects of these debates are not confined to the online space, but also provoke violent reactions and unexpected electoral movements in countries around the world. The accelerated production, circulation and consumption of images on the Internet has encouraged the radicalization of positions that the large platforms have monetized, thereby allowing the emergence of bizarre conspiracies that distract our gaze from the most obvious and pressing challenges.

The fictitious image that human beings have built of ourselves as being central and superior in relation to nature seems to have cracked in the ironic images of the Contours series by artist Mark Dorf. The anomalies of the climate that are experienced today in various parts of the planet are forcing us to rethink the industrial, extractive relationship of exploitation that the human species has developed with the environment and other living beings. Apian, Mishka Henner, and Marina Caneve investigate and reflect that complex relationship in Hives, 2400 B.C.E. - 1852 C.E., Feedlots, and Bridges are Beautiful, respectively.

It is to be hoped that the frequent, devastating environmental phenomena will soon cease to provoke the surprise and fascination shown by photographs collected from local newspaper websites by Dina Kelberman in Your Hail Photos, where the awestruck readers show enormous hailstones that have fallen from the sky. There is no time to lose for the naive gesture of holding and photographing a melting, disappearing ice ball between your fingers, to give way to an active reaction, a radical transformation that allows a diverse, respectful and shared model of life that the programme of the fifteenth edition of Getxophoto aims to imagine and explore.

Jon Uriarte

Born in Hondarribia in 1980, he studied photography at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya and the International Center of Photography of New York, he also holds a master in Projects and Artistic Theories by PhotoEspaña and the European University of Madrid. His work has been exhibited in collective and individual exhibitions at different galleries and centers such as La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Koldo Mitxelena in Donostia, Studio 304 of New York, HBC center in Berlin and Sala d’Art Jove in Barcelona. Founder of Widephoto, independent platform dedicated to curating activities about contemporary photography. He also conceptualized and coordinated DONE for three years, a project about reflection and visual creation promoted by Foto Colectania. He is currently living in London, where he works as digital curator of The Photographers’ Gallery.