Following the exhibition organized and hosted by Telefónica Foundation in Madrid in February 2004, where the collection was presented in public for the first time, MARCO Vigo will be the first stop of this exhibition in its lengthy tour around Spanish museums and art centres.

The focal point of this collection is the turning point where photography, on the threshold of the XXI century, changes from document into story. Photography begins to become aware of its own expressive possibilities and the value of its representative action, subverting codes and languages used by this medium.

Since the exhibition has been developed from emblematic artists of contemporary plasticity, it includes radical and conceptual, aesthetic and narrative, and documentary and social approaches. It is a whole that reflects the variety and eclecticism of a rarely prolific creative moment.

The artists on the Telefónica Contemporary Photography Collection use photography as a means of expression and experimentation. Their images speak of what the art experience is today in the context of contemporary culture.

Given that nowadays there is no doubt about the artistic value of photography and it has become one of the most commonly used artistic expressions by contemporary creators, it was necessary to start this Collection showing some sort of preference, with a markedly historical bias. It therefore begins in the sixties, with the works by the Düsseldorf School, the European disciples of Bernd and Hilla Becher (Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky) and the American disciples of John Baldessari (Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman), evolving towards cinematic-pictorial photography (Jeff Wall, Sam Taylor-Wood), and the most modern narrative developments.

The commonly accepted distinction between photographers and artists using photography is nowadays gradually disappearing. The current creators make use of photography with complete freedom and awareness, without feeling obliged to demonstrating the virtues or possibilities of this medium, as it has already proven right in its 170 years of history.

Photography has substituted painting in many cases. The invention of the camera made it faster, more accurate and more precise to take a real image, discrediting the technical virtuosity of painters and bringing the audience closer to a new reality.

From analogue to digital photography, all the latest technologies used in this art are represented in this exhibition, as well as some decisive examples of the relationship between photography and performances or social documents.

Different genres deeply rooted in the history of art, such as portrait, landscape or architectural photography, constitute this collection that includes the classic subjects of contemporary art, from the restoration of historical memory, to social denunciation, the criticism of social processes or the use of the body as stepping-stone for plastic communication.