After more than two years of work, and more than a decade since the disappearance of Palma Photo, Mallorca PhotoFest has been born, a festival promoted by the association Art Palma Contemporani that will fill, until next August, about thirty exhibition venues throughout the island with contemporary photography proposals. “The long-term objective is to turn it into a benchmark where we can reflect on images, where we can foster critical thinking through photography. 100 years ago it was an unquestionable source of authority and trust, and now it is used to distort reality. We think it is necessary to reflect on this, that images should also serve us to draw conclusions about the world we live in”. This is how Xavier Fiol, director of the festival, defines it, who, together with the general coordinator, Montserrat Torras, and with the advice of Xisco Bonnín and Horacio Fernández, has shaped a program that includes exhibitions, talks, guided tours, a reading club dedicated to photobooks, and a film series that will take place during May at the Teatre Sa Societat in Calvià.

It is just another almond tree. One of the thousands scattered across the Mallorcan geography that have defined its landscape and, therefore, its culture and identity for centuries. Specifically, since the end of the 18th century. Filtered through Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955), however, it is many other things, without ceasing to be, precisely, an almond tree. It is a sculptural figure, which alludes to a human presence, perhaps the naked body of a woman, and at the same time it is a kind of zombie, an anonymous and forgotten vestige: a part of the remains left by the Xylella fastidiosa catastrophe in the Mallorcan countryside. It is a relic, and also a prophecy, which is difficult to distinguish whether it comes from the dream world or the real one.