Photography emerges in the most emblematic corners of Cadaqués

GironaFor ten years now, at the beginning of autumn, Cadaqués has become a great exhibition stage for the best photographers in the world. This is possible thanks to the InCadaqués International Photography Festival, which organizes a host of exhibitions throughout galleries, gardens, beaches, and streets of this idyllic town of white houses at the foot of Cap de Creus. This year, in its tenth edition, from October 8 to 25, it will offer 25 exhibitions and workshops by 40 authors from 20 countries.

One of the most unique proposals of the festival are the aquatic exhibitions installed on the water of the town's bay beaches. The photographs, visible from the promenade, float on the surface of the sea and create a game of changing images with the background, the movement of the waves, and the reflections of the sun. This year it will be the turn of the snapshots by the Frenchman Jérémy Appert, who is also presenting work at the Galeria Iturria; the Korean Daesung Lee, and the winner of the OD Photo Prize 2026, Julie Peiffer.

The decision to integrate the photographers' works into the landscape of Cadaqués, beyond the usual exhibition supports, is an express wish of the festival's organization. "We always try to discover new spaces in Cadaqués, as we did a few years ago with the Corral de la Gala, which had been closed for fifteen years, or with a part of the atrium of the church of Santa Maria. This year we have incorporated a new iconic house, the Casa Rahola, where we are doing an intervention in the garden. The goal is to make people discover the works, but also iconic places, even to the people of the town who cannot usually access them," explains Valmont Achalme, director of the festival. And he adds: "We are inspired by the places and, starting from each space, we look for exhibitions that have a relationship with it."

Great names, creative residencies and documentary photography

Among the artists in the catalog, the British artist Jack Davison stands out, occupying two iconic spaces in Cadaqués such as the gardens of the Salvador Dalí House, in Portlligat, and the Casino, where he will exhibit his portraits and still lifes, faithful to the surrealist legacy of the town, which play with fragments of faces, hands, and insects. Kensuke Koike, for his part, starts from the portrait to take photography into the realm of sculpture and collage: his installation, created expressly for InCadaqués, recomposes two faces from fragments arranged on a structure of cubes, so that the image transforms according to the viewer's point of view. The route also incorporates Louis Stettner, who died in 2016 and who, for more than seven decades, built a body of work between New York and Paris, in which he connected American street photography with the tradition of humanist photography.

The festival also presents projects that have emerged from the creative residencies and are linked to the area, which can be visited in different parts of the town. Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon, for example, portrays the daily life of Gabrielle, a caregiver for stray cats in Cadaqués, in black and white photographs on the border between documentary and fable. Lore Stessel explores with dancer Margaux Fievet the links between photography and painting through the body and the landscape of Cap de Creus. And Marguerite Bornhauser, in Mirage, mixes celestial landscapes, underwater immersions, and tropical visions in a world halfway between reality and fiction, with films developed in seawater.

Documentary photography also runs through the festival, from historical memory to contemporary conflicts: Joan Vehí contributes his extensive archive about the town and Salvador Dalí, built over nearly forty years. Dina Oganova portrays the memory and daily life of a Georgia marked by its Soviet past and war, while Valentina Sinis approaches the Kurdish female fighters of the Women's Protection Units in the gardens of Casa Rahola, opened to the public for the first time.