Getxophoto 2025

Centered on REC, Getxophoto returns to the Basque Country, Spain, with a new edition exploring contemporary photography through exhibitions, talks, and curated experiences.

Overview

First we pressed the PAUSE button, then the PLAY button, and now we’re hitting REC. The round red symbol, always so easy to find on cameras and electronic devices, takes its name from record, to save, film or register.

Whether still or moving, the relationship between the image and memory is a central theme in visual studies that has captured the attention of great minds in the past such as Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag and Georges Didi-Huberman. But what remains of this relationship today in contemporary image technologies?

Our throwaway culture means that we no longer take photographs or videos to treasure moments, but to share them and forget them instantly, and we face an overwhelming abundance that wears our sensitivity down, turning all visual memory into pure noise. Added to this is the unprecedented proliferation of fake images –which collapse our concept of ​​reality– and the conversion of any document into a file readable only by non-human intelligences, with software and devices designed to quickly become scrap metal. Furthermore, the structural limits of data centres, where we store memories without taking into account their enormous needs for water and energy, threaten the future of the “archive”, both personal and civilising (spoiler alert: it won’t be possible to keep all the information).

These are just some of the factors meaning that visual technologies are facing a gigantic paradigm shift today. That is why, in the next edition of Getxophoto, we ask ourselves how the visual media arts are reinventing themselves in this scenario: what is the difference between accumulating archives and telling a story, what is the future of images –and of memory constructed through visual registers– in a world with extreme, immaterial, easily manipulated and apparently infinite REC.

The exhibitions program includes works by international artists such as Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert by John Divola, La Festa Dell'Equatore by Italian artist Rosa Lacavalla, Arno Gisinger's Betrachterbilder, Natacha de Mahieu's Theatre of Authenticity, Parque Natural by Basque visual artist José Ramón Ais, The Mother As A Creator by Taiwanese Annie Hsiao–Ching Wang, Hero, Father, Friend by Ghanese photographer and filmmaker Carlos Idun-Tawiah, Short–Term, Anna Barea's Shelter, But Long–Term by Italian photographer and cinematographer Federico Vespignani, and Hermes/Unesco by Argentinian visual artist Martín Bollati. Additionally, exhibitions include Jane Says by New Zealand photographer Ann Shelton, selected by curator Maria Ptqk through the PhMuseum 2025 Photography Grant.

Among the activities, the Hamaiketako talks (like a kit-kat in Basque) will take place on Saturday mornings, in the company of local artists and cultural agents with time and space to share. The aim is to foster unhurried conversation, to get to know each other, to exchange concerns, to dare to ask question. In short, it’s an escape from the traditional “student-teacher” dynamic, offering an opportunity to enjoy a morning with the director of Kutxa Fundazioa exhibition spaces, Ane Abalde, and the architect and photographer, María Azkarate.

Encerrona vol. 12. is a program designed this time to ask ourselves if we are becoming immune to the avalanche of images that bombard us daily, to reflect on the immense accumulation of archives, and, by the way, to think about the future of the image in a world of extreme, immaterial, easily manipulable, and seemingly infinite REC. Conversations include The Exhaustion Of Sensitivity (in English) with Nathalie (Herschdofer – Photo Elysée Museum), Clothilde Morette (Maison Européene de la Photographie) and
Jon Uriarte (Independent Digital Curator), Spoiler Alert: All The Information Will Not Be Preserved (in Spanish) with Marina Otero (Architect, Researcher and Lecturer at Columbia University), Joana Moll – (Artist and Researcher) and María Ptqk (Getxophoto Curator). Following, The Algorithm, AI And company (in Spanish) will bring up the conversation with Roc Albalat, Estampa (Collective of Programmers and Digital Researchers), Pita Arreola (Digital Art Curator and Contributor to the Victoria and Albert Museum) and Jon Uriarte.

Additionally, MAPS / BFF (; Best Friends Forever;) is a meeting of photography school students, a gathering of emerging visual artists, a space to connect, share their work, and build networks of collaboration and exchange.

However, even if you are far away, you can enjoy Getxophoto Festival in different ways. One of them is from home through the Internet. Public is recommended to enter Filmin platform, search for the Getxophoto Channel and give a chance to what Pepa Blanes proposes, that is, her particular view at REC. Plus, you can immerse yourself in an extensive and eclectic soundtrack on the theme of this edition, REC, curated by the unclassifiable Catalan producer, composer and musician Raül Refree. For this edition he activates a playlist featuring hits from Eurythmics, Franco Battiato, Talking Heads, Barricada, The Flaming Lips, Fugazi, Kae Tempest, MGMT, Silvia Pérez Cruz, and Raül Refree himself, among many others. A list to stay and live in; a way to enjoy Getxophoto from anywhere and on a friendly vibe.