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Based on Spanish Photography

© Francesc Catalá Roca
Letter 1
07/01/2021
Rosa Olivares
to Sema D’Acosta
“Spanish photography’s problem has nothing to do with photography”
“Spanish photography’s problem has nothing to do with photography”
Letter 2
21/01/2021
Sema D’Acosta
to Rosa Olivares
“In a world heading towards incorporeality, physical things are becoming increasingly valuable.”
“In a world heading towards incorporeality, physical things are becoming increasingly valuable.”
Letter 3
04/02/2021
Rosa Olivares
to Sema D’Acosta
“All human creation is a document of its time, and that all works of art are essentially documentary in nature”
“All human creation is a document of its time, and that all works of art are essentially documentary in nature”
MANUEL-IBÁÑEZ-Islantilla-2020
Letter 4
18/02/2021
Sema D’Acosta
to Rosa Olivares
“The camera can give an account of reality and is able to bring us together with others in a dialogue that can encompass the viewer.”
“The camera can give an account of reality and is able to bring us together with others in a dialogue that can encompass the viewer.”
Letter 5
25/02/2021
Rosa Olivares
to Sema D’Acosta
As a conclusion to the correspondence between Rosa Olivares and Sema D’Acosta, we invite you to watch their face-to-face conversation.
As a conclusion to the correspondence between Rosa Olivares and Sema D’Acosta, we invite you to watch their face-to-face conversation.

Meet the participants

Rosa Olivares

Rosa Olivares (1955) is a writer, editor, art critic, and exhibition curator. Founder of the magazine Lápiz (1982), and later of EXIT Imagen y Cultura (1999), Exit Book (2002), Exit-Express (2004) and Fluor (2012) and of UTOPIA, a cultural critic magazine in 2019 in Mexico. She has curated, among other exhibitions: “Einsamkeit. Un sentimiento alemán”, 1992/93 at the “la Caixa” Foundation; “Entre la pasión y el silencio. Otra visión de la fotografía española”, at the XXV International Photography Meetings in Arles, France; “Los Géneros de la Pintura: una visión actual”, 1994, at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; “Angela Grauerholz / Astrid Klein“, 1995 at the Sala Parpalló, Valencia; “La imagen del poder“, 1998 at the Fundación Arte y Tecnología, Fund. Telefónica, Madrid; “Miradas Impúdicas“, 2000, Fundació “la Caixa”, Barcelona; “Axel Hütte. Terra Incognita“. 2004 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), Madrid. “Documentos. Memoria del futuro “, 2007, Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea, San Sebastián; “Periferias“, II Biennial of Architecture, Art and Canary Landscape, ” Contexto Crítico. Fotografía española siglo XXI “, 2014, at the Tabacalera in Madrid.

In 2005 she published “100 Fotógrafos Españoles

She currently directs the Photography room of the Niemeyer Foundation in Avilés. She lives between Mexico City and Madrid.

Sema D’Acosta

Sema D’Acosta (Seville, 1975) is an art critic, independent curator, teacher and researcher. Interested in the syntax and ontology of any current expressive language, especially photography.

He has been curator of the TALENT LATENT in SCAN, Tarragona International Photography Festival (2018) and of the IX edition of the Pilar Citoler Photography Award (2017-18), as well as responsible for more than fifty exhibition projects in the last ten years, among other monographic exhibitions by Joan Fontcuberta, Luis Gordillo, Bleda y Rosa, Gonzalo Puch, Miguel Ángel Tornero, Ángel Marcos, Dionisio González and Juan del Junco. He has also organized several thesis projects, most of them focused on the limits and drifts of the image today.

He has published several books on contemporary art, the latest MEMORÁNDUM. LUIS GORDILLO (2021) TRÍPLEX (2020), THINKING ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY (2018), IMAGO, ERGO SUM. JOAN FONTCUBERTA (2015), in addition to having written monographic essays on multiple authors, among others Pieter Hugo, Robert Motherwell, Per Barclay, Martin Kippenberger, Jack Pierson, Kimsooja, Carlos Pérez Siquier, Luis Gordillo, Carlos Aires or Miguel Ángel Tornero.

 

As an art critic, he has collaborated for more than a decade with ‘EL CULTURAL’, a weekly supplement of ‘EL MUNDO’.