Hermes/Unesco brings together 999 images generated from masks, sculptures, icons, and totems taken from catalogues in the UNESCO World Heritage collection, combined with the AI Midjourney programme. The images are fictional but reflect the most widespread patterns within that vast archive of humanity—the Internet. Despite their apparent randomness, they reveal cultural hegemony and the imposition of certain civilizational narratives over others.
Martín Bollati, Buenos Aires, 1986. Visual artist, editor and teacher. Founder and director of SED editorial and 0/0. He coordinates the workshops Gesto editorial and Jugar contra la máquina. His work explores the relationship between photography and fiction, with a particular interest in the discursive capacities that exist at the margins of the photographic apparatus and its structure. He has published the following books: A kind of loop by Riot Books, La forma bruta by the University of Cadiz, Vacant dream state by 280a, Para describir una flor by Raya Editorial, Ruinas sin título, Aguas vivas, Texto Nazi and Hermes/Unesco by SED editorial. He has had solo exhibitions at the 3rd Beijing Biennial of Photography in China, the Kirchner Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Cero Gallery in Madrid, Spain, and the Hydra Gallery in Mexico City, among others. In 2014 he was awarded the XI Roberto Villagraz Scholarship to pursue his Master’s studies in conceptual photography at EFTI. In 2017 his work as an editor was awarded the prize for Best Latin American Photobook at the Latin American Photography Colloquiums in Mexico, and in 2018, together with the 280a collective, he won the Art Trail Tesla award at the Unseen Festival in Amsterdam. That same year, he was part of the Ones to watch issue of the British Journal of Photography.
Getxophoto is an image festival created and managed by Begihandi, that has been taking place in Getxo—Basque Country, Euskadi—since 2007. This festival is part of a cultural ecosystem with the aim of being more participatory, hybrid, committed and sustainable. This thematic Festival is conceived as a platform that addresses contemporary challenges through different proposals, from visual storytellers around the world, in an attempt to create spaces for reflection and establish a collective conversation. Getxophoto is characterized by the radical defense of public space (both physical and online). For this reason, most of its programme is composed of outdoor installations, highlighting, on the one hand, the link between the image and the environment and, on the other, generating a more horizontal and participatory relationship with the public.
This year, after PAUSE and PLAY, the festival will take the theme: REC. The abbreviation for Record, which usually appears as a red circle on our screens, refers to a register, to memory, to the story of the past, and to images as a witness to reality. The relationship between image and record is a central debate in visual studies, one that has been addressed by the great names of the theory of photography such as Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag and Georges Didi-Huberman. But what is left of this debate today in relation to contemporary technologies? What is the difference between accumulating archives and telling a story? What is the future of the image—and of memory constructed through visual recording—in a world of extreme, immaterial, manipulable and seemingly infinite REC?
María Ptqk is the curator of GETXOPHOTO 2025.
Copyright © Martín Bollati and Getxophoto, all rights reserved
