Exhibitions
Reveal yourself, look for ways to escape
The 14th edition of the contemporary analog photography festival offers 25 exhibitions in Vilassar de Dalt and incorporates a new Photographic Heritage Day coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the first photograph.
Photography can also be a form of escapism. It can allow us to escape from everyday noise, routine, time or even ourselves. This is the idea behind the 14th edition of the Revela't Festival, which under the motto Ways to Escape will turn Vilassar de Dalt into a space for reflection on the multiple forms of escape through contemporary analogue photography.
The festival, one of the main events dedicated to analog photography in Catalonia, will be held this year for the first time in the fall, from October 1 to 18, 2026. The central weekend, from October 16 to 18, will concentrate much of the programming, with the presence of guest artists, family activities, the traditional Photographic Market and one of the main novelties of this edition: the 1st Photographic Heritage and Visual Culture Conference.
Manel Armengol Mafifestacions. The new edition presents a day dedicated to photographic heritage on the occasion of the second centenary of the first photograph (1826-2026) and will pay tribute to the photographer Manel Armengol.
The exhibition program will bring together 25 proposals from national and international artists and groups, distributed in six spaces in Vilassar de Dalt. The Fàbrica Cal Garbat, the festival's main venue, will host around twenty projects, while the rest can be visited on Salvador Riera Street, Plaça del Teatre, Els Rajolers, Sala l'Estrella and the Passatge and Carrer del Carme.
The concept of escape takes on many different forms in this year's exhibitions. Among the standout names are JM Castro Prieto, who will present Caín , a proposal that proposes a symbolic escape from the narrative that others construct about us; and Joni Sternbach, with Surfland , a series of environmental portraits of surfers who find the sea as a daily space of evasion.
The program also includes A Poor Sort of Memory , by Tracy L. Chandler, which presents the California desert as a refuge linked to the past, and Mare Nostrum , by Markus Kaesler, which addresses the reality of people crossing the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach Europe. These proposals are joined by many others that explore freedom, displacement, memory and the need to move away from the immediate environment.
Work by Sian Davey.
One of the projects that completes this look is La velocidad de escape , by Alex Llovet, winner of the festival's open call, selected from more than 600 proposals. His work follows beings and objects that seek their own freedom, in tune with a motto that poses escape not only as a physical action, but also as a mental state.
The photograph by Filips Smits, chosen as the central image of the edition, synthesizes this desire to explore the different ways of escape that run through the program. The festival thus proposes a journey through individual and collective forms of escape, real and symbolic, using photography as a space for pause, questioning and transformation.
Coinciding with the second centenary of the first photograph in history, dated 1826, Revela't broadens its horizons this year with the 1st Photographic Heritage and Visual Culture Conference, scheduled for October 16. Organized by La Imatge Perduda, the conference aims to put the research, preservation and interpretation of photographic heritage into dialogue with the role it has played in the construction of contemporary visual culture.
Work by Tracy L. Chandler.
The meeting will be held at the Castell dels Marquesos de Santa Maria de Barberà, declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest, and will combine presentations and communications around the history of photography, its techniques, archives and different experiences linked to the conservation and study of photographic heritage.
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