The second edition of the festival was held from 7 to 10 April 2016. In this edition of San José Foto, the curatorship was in charge of the Spanish Cristina de Middel and the theme of the same focused on “Gender.” The festival was attended by international and national guests who shared their experiences together with exhibitions at the San José Cultural Space, a municipal museum and a public thoroughfare of authors from Brazil, Uruguay,México,Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Ghana, France and Spain.

Selected Artists: Patrick Willocq, Pachi Santiago, Guillermo Giansanti, Eric Gyamfi, Bruno Morais, Nicolás Wormul, Adriana Zehbrauskas, Karla Gachet, Danielle Villasana, Federico Estol, Lujan Agusti, Jorge Panchoaga, Pete Muller, Zaida Gonzalez and Joana Toro.

CURATOR

Cristina de Middel is a photographer whose work investigates photography’s ambiguous relationship to truth. Blending documentary and conceptual photographic practices, she plays with reconstructions and archetypes that blur the border between reality and fiction. After a successful career as a photojournalist, de Middel stepped outside of the photojournalistic gaze.

She then produced the critically acclaimed series The Afronauts in 2012, which explored the history of a failed space program in Zambia in the 1960s through staged reenactments of obscure narratives. De Middel’s work shows that fiction can serve as the subject of photography just as well as facts can, highlighting that our expectation that photography must always make reference to reality is flawed.

De Middel has exhibited extensively internationally and has received numerous awards and nominations, including PhotoFolio Arles 2012, the Deutsche Börse Prize, POPCAP’ 13, and the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in New York. De Middel lives and works in Mexico.