From the US-Mexico border to protests in Poland: highlights of PhotoEspaña 2026

Models Aweng and Awok for T Magazine, 2022, (detail). Photograph: Viviane Sassen Spain’s leading festival of photography showcases the work of more than 300 visual artists in nearly 100 exhibitions across the country By Guy Lane P hotoEspaña, Spain’s leading festival of photography, held its official opening in Madrid this month and by September nearly 100 exhibitions will have showcased the work of more than 300 visual artists in the capital and across the country. Loosely corralled under the theme of reimagining, the exhibitions feature work by major figures in Spanish and international photography and less well-known emerging artists. View image in fullscreen From the series Invisible Line. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena View image in fullscreen From the series Between Borders. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena Fundación Mapfre hosts an expansive overview of the career of the Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena, including three series he produced focusing on the effects and meaning of the US-Mexico border: Invisible Line, Between Borders and Los Americanos. Of the border wall he says: “It’s potent, it shows its power all the time. Wherever you look, there’s these jagged lines or these massive concrete walls that are cutting and showing that we are different. They are from the north, we are from the south and the cultures don’t mix. There’s this obsession with being separate, being two different cultures.” View image in fullscreen From the series Los Americanos. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena The effects of separation can be devastating. “One of the interesting or more poignant things of this experience was how the border, the wall, basically dissolves the idea of identity and personhood,” Cartagena says. “And I’m iterating on the same idea. Who am I? Who are the people that live around me? Who are we as Mexicans? Who are we as Americans? And this physicality of the wall basically erases us and we become generic, we become no one.” View image in fullscreen Laia Abril at her endometriosis solo show at Museo del Romanticismo in Madrid. Photograph: Jorquera Seven life-size portraits by Laia Abril are installed in an intimate show at the Museo del Romanticismo exploring the debilitating effects of endometriosis. Her subjects, six women and a trans man, were photographed in the postures they adopt to manage their pain. “The idea was to visualise in real size”, she says. “Their bodies in moments of pain, but also they were showing us what are the different positions they take when they try to have relief from that pain.” Abril’s portraits are taken from above in a reference to the almost out-of-body experiences she endures while coping with her own pain. The triptych presentation is a further nod to the physical effects of the condition. “It’s kind of a fight between our body helping us to be resilient and fighting the pain, but also our body needs to be disconnected because it’s carrying a lot of pain.” View image in fullscreen Lux and Umbra at