Private and Leisure Life

With “Spain – Based on a True Story”, the Photomuseum Braunschweig honors the work of the Spanish photographer Txema Salvans with a first solo exhibition in a museum in Germany. From 2 to 25 September 2016.

Txema Salvans is interested in the private and leisure life of his compatriots. For more than ten years, he has been taking pictures of people celebrating weddings, holidaying in their own country and killing time in the same region of Spain. With his exceptional view he discloses the crude, funny and absurd in everyday life and thus breaks through the surface of what is on display. For the series “Nice to Meet You” (2005) Salvans asked complete strangers by newspaper ad to become part of their family for one day. The thereby created „family album“ shows intimate and sometimes painful black and white photographs in addition to short stories revealing the vulnerability of the people in the photographs.

Txema Salvans’ photographs oscillate between irony and cynicism, between humor à la Martin Parr and profound seriousness. They are soundly composed, striking images of contemporary Spanish society that Txema Salvans considers himself a part of.

Txema Salvans was born in Barcelona in 1971. He studied biology and photography. His photobook “The Waiting Game” (2014) was awarded as the winner of the Iberoamerican Photobook Competition 2012 and it is introduced by a text by Martin Parr.

Please find more information at Photomuseum Braunschweig