The artists by artists exhibit suggests an approach to photographic portraits made by personalities within the history of art, to other characters from the same field. This approach reveals the interest of these artists to document their historic moment and their main characters.

The simple fact of doing a portrait doesn’t imply just copying or capturing the person as they appear in front of the artist, it also —in accordance to the decisions of the person creating the image— represents the character, the mood and other aspects of the personality of the portrayed by means of the environment, the semblance, the body´s position… countless characteristics that tell much about the person, more than the mere fact of showing an objective image of them. In this manner, the decisions taken by the photographer, combined with the behavior of the portrayed, also speak about the relationship that the person behind the camera and the one in front of it have. That is why each work of art in this curatorial exercise functions as a narrative, a memory, a moment in history, as well as a manner to depict and be depicted.

The photographs in the exhibition artists by artists encompass the period from the second decade of the 20^thCentury until the beginning of the 21^st Century. They show a gathering of views and identities within the same recognizable photographic instant. Despite the fact that each artist possesses a particular perspective and relationship with each portrayed person, within this curatorial exercise, certain comparative lines can be traced.

Each of the portraits assembled in this collection harbors within itself a proposal, a selection, a dialogue, a context and a legacy with multiple values in the sense that it can be considered an art document in two aspects, as Jean-François Chevrier comments:

“[…] on one hand, because they give information about an artistic activity […] and, on the other hand, because they are in themselves, moments and milestones of photographic art”.

In conclusion, we find in these photographs a diversity of views within what can be denominated as a subgenre, and which function as documents that are inscribed in the history of art with both, a documentary value and an artistic value as well.

• Curatorship: CIAC’s Team
• Artists: Richard Avedon, Peter Beard, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Alberto García Alix, Denis Hopper, Agustín Jiménez, André Kertész, Ugo Mulas, Arnold Newman, Herb Ritts, Jason Schmidt, Stephen Shore, Thomas Struth, Andy Warhol, Edward Weston.
• Sixth curatorship for CIAC’s office in 2017