Festival organizers have decided to present the 2016 PHotoEspaña Award to Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert (Antwerp, 1941). Precursor of an unmistakable style that influenced tendencies in the 70s and 80s, Harry Gruyaert’s work is characterized by a unique and extraordinary use of color. As an experimenter since his beginnings as a film director, he has managed to create a distinct style for his photography based on an exquisite treatment of light, ever present in his work and giving rise to an iconography full of beauty, harmony and authenticity. Tireless traveler, his pictures of Morocco, France, Belgium, Egypt, India, Russia and the U.S. form part of the patrimony of European photography and place his legacy among the major masters of international photography.

Previous winners of the PHotoEspaña Award include Ramón Masats, Bernard Plossu, Alberto García-Alix, Thomas Ruff, Graciela Iturbide, Malick Sidibé, Martin Parr, Robert Frank, Hiroshi Sugimoto, William Klein, William Eggleston, Helena Almeida, Nan Goldin, Duane Michals, Chema Madoz, Luis González Palma and Josef Koudelka.

Harry Gruyaert’s work is on view in the group show Transitions. Ten Years that Altered Europe as part of PHotoEspaña 2016s official section. The show can be visited in the Sala Picasso at the Círculo de Bellas Artes until September 25th, 2016.

About Harry Gruyaert
In his more than 30-year career, Harry Gruyaert, member of the Magnum agency since 1981, has become a master in capturing the world’s colors and chromatic nuances, from Europe to Morocco, India to Egypt. As curators Alexis Fabry and Maria Wills affirm in Transitions. Ten Years that Altered Europe –published by La Fábrica in collaboration with Toluca- “Harry Gruyaert became known, after photographing Morocco, with his series Made in Belgium realized almost completely in the 80s.” Gruyaert’s pictures avoid exotic stereotypes, instead placing the viewer in mysterious, almost impenetrable atmospheres. In the words of Fabry and Wills, “Gruyaert paints in color a different, feverish world, arising from the long nights of Carnival.”