Artists: Cristina García Rodero, Cristina de Middel and Lúa Ribeira
Dates: June 01st 2024 to July 12th 2024

“Librets de Festes” is the first joint exhibition by the three female Spanish photographers who form part of the Magnum Photos cooperative, undoubtedly the most prestigious in the world. It will be presented at the Ponce+Robles gallery as part of the latest edition of Festival Off from PHotoESPAÑA, an event always highly anticipated by lovers of art and photography.

“Llibrets de Festes” is the result of a project carried out in the Community of Valencia in 2023 by Cristina García Rodero, Cristina de Middel and Lua Ribeira, who have been invited to work together for the first time.

The project looks at the spring festivals in the Community of Valencia from each of the photographer’s perspectives, with the first phase taking place in Castellón at the end of March 2023. The three collaborators held an open day at the Casa de Caragols under the name Magnum Live Lab, during which they showed visitors how they go about editing their work.

Each of the photographers spoke freely about her journey. Cristina García Rodero (1949, Ciudad Real), has worked in various locations throughout the Community of Valencia. She began creating her great anthropological and social portrait of our country in the mid-1970s, starting with the Enfarinats in Alicante and the Castellets in Castellón, and later progressing to the Falles in Valencia.  Cristina de Middel (1975, Alicante) was born and raised in the Community of Valencia. She has always sought to portray a different narrative of the Falles de Valencia than the version supplied by official media outlets. Her somewhat ironic approach to capturing images and scenarios succeeds in broadening the depiction of these events. Finally, Lua Ribeira (1986, Galicia) has a more distanced approach, viewing the festivals with the fresh eyes of someone who has not previously experienced them. She focuses her lens on the peripheries, both physical and temporal: heading to the outskirts of the cities, where large tower blocks are bordered by vegetable plots, she captures many of the young people returning from the city-centre festivities in the early hours of the morning. It is the portrait of a generation drifting between a new world and the world they are inheriting, for which they are forced to take responsibility.

As an intrinsic part of the project, the publishing houses This Book is True and Los Doscientos have released a special edition: a box containing three Llibrets de Festes with each of the authors’ works and three portfolios, each of which contains ten original works. This special edition is limited to just two hundred copies and aims to bring the work of these creators to new collectors.

This project has been curated by Rafael Doctor Roncero with the collaboration of FUJIFILMS and Magnum Photos.