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

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. 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.” 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. …