It is very likely that when this photography school, with more than half a century of history behind it, considered the theme of these conferences, the last thing it thought about was that the situation it would find itself in would somehow be related to the chosen theme. The IEFC, the oldest photography school in Spain, faces the loss of its historic headquarters in the Escola Industrial de Barcelona, owned by the Barcelona Provincial Council. That building houses memories, archives, echoes of footsteps and laughter, traces of silent time. Now, that farewell becomes an open, uncomfortable question: how to sustain the gaze when the support disappears?
From October 21 to 23, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge once again hosts the VII Photography Conferences. Three days to think about how images can give voice to those who cross borders, and to confront the ethical dilemmas of representing pain and hope in contexts of invisibility. Because the gaze is not innocent, it always intervenes; and photography is not neutral, it is a witness.
"Migration crises are an evident symptom of a world crossed by structural inequalities," they point out from the IEFC. In this diagnosis lies an added responsibility, because the image should not be limited to being a mirror, but should also challenge, question, and make uncomfortable. How do we show the suffering of others without falling into sensationalist exposure? How do we construct the imaginaries of others without reproducing stereotypes? What place does ethics occupy in the act of looking and showing?
During these three days, artists, photojournalists, researchers, and thinkers share experiences that explore the limits of representation and open possibilities for visual empathy. The sessions are free and open to a wide audience, a gesture consistent with the public service vocation that the IEFC has defended since its birth in 1972. Amidst the institutional challenge, these conferences stand as a symbolic act of persistence: believing that the image can continue to be a refuge when everything falters.
The institutional opening of the first day is led by Valentín Roma, director of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, who emphasizes: "As long as I remain the director of this center, we will host these conferences, not only because of the need for institutions like the IEFC that nourish La Virreina, but also because of its commitment to photographic heritage." Immediately after, the director of the IEFC, Josep Maria Llobet, asserts its mission to promote visual culture: "May it continue to be a meeting place for creators and activists to reflect on the image in the contemporary era." His speech hints at the open wound of holding these conferences in the current context of polarization, and highlights the urgency of seeing that migration is a symptom of a world traversed by ecological crises, cultural inequalities, and invisible human displacements. And how important it is to have testimony of what is happening.
This panel proposes an open dialogue between Anna Surinyach, documentary photographer and co-founder of 5W magazine, and Abdoulaye Fall, PhD in Demography from the UAB and researcher of Senegalese and sub-Saharan migratory flows in Catalonia. Accompanied and moderated by photojournalist Edu Ponces, founding partner of RUIDO Photo, both share reflections on how to ethically document migration and disappearance.
Surinyach's work accompanying NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders and Open Arms, where she has been able to bear witness to people in transit on Mediterranean and African routes, understands photography as an act of accompaniment and recognition, not of exhibition. Through her camera, she reconstructs the history of those migrants whose trace disappears in the sea. The disappeared who are nothing more than a silence, and she narrates stories, through her images, that make your hair stand on end and shrink your heart. Fall provides an interdisciplinary perspective, from academic research and personal experience, focused on the dignity and fair representation of migrant communities. The meeting revolves around difficult questions: what images dignify? What is the weight of the photographer in the narration of the other?
"Photographing the journey is not just showing the way —says Surinyach—, it is understanding the void left by those who do not arrive"The second day focuses on Richard Mosse,Irish artist whose works asInfraandThe Enclavehave redefined the boundaries of photojournalism. Using military infrared film and thermal technologies, Mosse addresses conflicts in the Congo and migratory flows to Europe with radical visual strategies.Its proposal confronts horror with aesthetic beauty,building a tension that forces the viewer to rethink their place. In that gesture of contradiction lies the strength of its ethics. What is pleasing to the eye can be a bridge to empathy, not a disguise that conceals.
In Incoming, Mosse records global migratory movements with thermal cameras that reveal faceless bodies, stripped of identity by the very devices that control them. The disfigurement imposed by technology becomes a metaphor for contemporary anonymity, for the invisibility that accompanies forced exile. This reduction of bodies to thermal signs forces us to ask ourselves: how much humanity remains in us when we become data, shadows, or featureless silhouettes?
The third and final day will feature Myriam Meloni, a photographer whose investigations have explored the links between power, class, and migration. Meloni will focus her talk on movement understood as a political and existential act, how historical structures of colonialism, gender, and privilege determine who has the right to move and who does not. Her work moves through the margins, in lives that wait, bodies that resist, identities that reinvent themselves between borders.
This artist's work complements the conference with the exhibition On Clear Days You Can See Europe, with an open visit at the IEFC headquarters (at Comte d'Urgell, 187) until November 2. This exhibition showcases various migratory experiences through a feminine gaze, not only of the photographer but also of her protagonists. Through delicate images and visual narratives, the artist shows that migrating can be looking at the horizon with hope, even when the sea separates more than it unites.
It's not just about exhibiting images, it's about opening dialogues and putting consciousness to work."Migrating is not just moving —explains Meloni—, it is inhabiting the transit. The border is not on a map, but in the gazes that recognize or deny you." Borders are not only geographical, but also perceptive, emotional, ethical.
To close these sessions, the collective Al'Akhawat brings from Memories and territories open to listening. Composed of five artists from the Morocco-Spain diaspora, this group works around the call center as a symbolic space of communication, resistance, and affection. Their artistic practice weaves intimate and political stories where nostalgia is a living archive, and dispersed voices gather to listen and be heard.
A living archive of visual memory
The IEFC is much more than a teaching center, it is a living archive of visual memory,of Catalonia and the State. But despite facing an uncertain future, the institution does not surrender to disillusionment and, with these conferences, continues to reaffirm its commitment to society, its will to remain a benchmark in the teaching and dissemination of photography.In a visually saturated time, when the urgency of novelty threatens to anesthetize sensitivity, and in the face of the prevailing disinformation in which we are immersed, these encounters recover photography as an act of listening and reflection. It is not just about exhibiting images, it is about opening dialogues, putting conscience to work and giving real testimony of a situation that is dehumanized and reduced to pure statistics.
Photography is also a political gesture. It not only captures reality, but can transform it. In the attempt to understand the other and in the mirror to recognize ourselves. It questions us, what is our place when looking and narrating?
But when one looks with care and empathy, when one understands that behind each face there is a complex story and not a stereotype, the image becomes a gesture. A gesture of justice, of encounter, of courage and of recognition. For this reason, these IEFC conferences are a beacon in the new territories of committed photography.