Exhibitions
Open Panoramic 2026 puts photographic vision to the test
Nine finalist proposals explore the limits of contemporary imagery at the Isern Dalmau Space, in an edition that commemorates the two hundred years of the first preserved photograph and questions the role of photography in the age of artificial intelligence.
What does it mean to photograph today, in a world saturated with images and where artificial intelligence transforms the processes of creation and visual representation? This is one of the questions that runs through Open Panoràmic 2026, the exhibition that brings together the nine finalist works of the Panoràmic festival's open call and which can be visited from November 10 at the Espai Isern Dalmau in Barcelona, until December 30.
Organized by the Lluís Coromina Isern Foundation, the exhibition proposes a plural approach to the new ways of producing, thinking, and experimenting with images in the current context. The nine selected proposals are articulated around three categories — still image, audiovisual essay, and installation and other formats — which allow different languages and ways of understanding contemporary visual creation to unfold.
This tenth edition of the festival is structured under the motto "Burning with Desire," a proposal that takes as its starting point the commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the first preserved photograph to revisit the history of the photographic image from present-day concerns. Photography, traditionally understood as a witness and record of reality, now faces a scenario of profound transformations. The proliferation of images, the incessant circulation of visual content, and the emergence of new artificial generation tools force a rethinking of its function, limits, and very nature.
Marc Angles, Amanita digital.
In this context, the finalist works raise questions about the place that photography still occupies as a form of testimony, its capacity to construct narratives, and the possibility of preserving its critical, poetic, and political dimension. Far from seeking univocal answers, the proposals establish a space for dialogue between different approaches to the image and invite the viewer to question the mechanisms with which they observe and interpret the world.
The exhibition thus becomes a territory of convergence between diverse practices and sensibilities, where the image ceases to be merely an instrument of representation to become also a field of experimentation, thought, and reflection. The nine selected works demonstrate that, despite technological and cultural transformations, contemporary creation continues to find extraordinary potential in photography and visual cultures to interpret, interrogate, and question our time.
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