The Spanish are coming

Austerity has hit Spain hard and arts funding has vanished – yet young Spanish photographers are taking the world by storm. Ricardo Cases, Carlos Spottorno, Óscar Monzón, Aleix Plademunt, Julián Barón and – especially – Cristina de Middel have published highly acclaimed photobooks, leading Martin Parr to comment on a “new generation of Spanish photographers that has to be taken into account”. Yet they have all done so without the support of the Spanish photography establishment.

Juan Peces, a Paris-based correspondent for El País, returned to his hometown of Madrid during the opening of PhotoEspaña to talk to some of the key photographers among this emerging generation, together with the curators, designers and publishers who have observed their rise first hand. He finds that the financial crisis, and the lack of institutional support for young photographers, has created a culture of necessity — a do-it-yourself attitude that plays into an instinctive sense of independence and mistrust of authority (after decades of authoritarian rule under General Franco), forcing photographers to set up their own structures, from exhibition spaces to publishing ventures. And if there’s anything that can be taken away from the Spanish experience, it’s an understanding of how their collectives work, because these are central to the emergence of this generation – the vehicle for their drive to make challenging work and be seen.