FOTOCANÍMAR

FOTOCANÍMAR, International Festival and Colloquium of Photography of Matanzas, was born out of the shared desire to create a space for photography that enables connection, exchange and learning. In conceiving this Festival, we uphold the belief in the usefulness of art and its transformative potential, giving hopeful shape to the persistent dream of changing reality, of bringing about transformations in contemporary society, of working towards a present that is kinder to human beings and their environment, and also of the need to (re)invent the future. Among the main motivations that have led to this event is the wish to consolidate a space that can bring together the universal vocation spread across the photographic community and among those who make photography an expanded field, without the local being absent from the ecumenical.

Naming this festival FOTOCANÍMAR expresses the link with the heritage that comes from our aboriginal peoples. It reflects a connection with the torrent of multiple evolutions of humankind, the city and the river which, after flowing through it, reaches the sea in the bay and, to a large extent, defines a worldview and an identity. The river, as a symbolic current of this celebration, evokes essences and transfigurations related to the chosen setting, the city of Matanzas, and its economic, anthropological, historical, cultural and environmental flow. A city, the stage for multiple traditions that embrace the Festival, with its own narrative linked to photography, and a spring of water – as an ideo-aesthetic source – to experiment and bring forth, in its connection with the world, an expanded vision of the image.