The opening speech was carried out by Antonio Ariño, vice-principal for Culture and Sport of the Universitat de Valènica; Juan Viña, president of the Fundación La Canyada Blanch; Giuseppe Grezzi, councillor of Sustainable Mobility of the València City Hall; Armand Llàcer, communication director of the Imprenta CG; Alfredo De Stefano, the director of the Photography International Festival of Monterrey and the director of the magazine Luz del Norte; and Tania Castro, director of the PhotOn Festival. 

Photography can change your life.  That’s an assumption of the PhotOn festival as they have shown for nine years since the project started.  Parts of reality which cut across time and space, stories in images, moments which picture a whole world without words.  Vision though the lens of a camera, no more and no less.  In 2019, this visual earthquake, as PhotOn has been qualified, is celebrating its 9th edition and organises a meeting week with a lot of activities under the slogan ‘Female Conscience Rioter’.

As the organisation team explains, this year the major part of the speakers which integrate the programmation are ‘powerful women’ with a daunting task to make visible the problems of our society.  Women with powerful and personal speeches, with the aim of being the ones who tell her own (hi)story as well as vindicating the women’s role in Photography.  Women who bet for being the viewers instead of being the viewed.  Surrounded by these ideas, from the 7th to the 11th of May there will be conferences, exhibitions and free and open night-screenings.  On the other hand, the so-traditional portfolio screening will take place.

During the opening of the event, Ariño highlighted the power of photography to promote the ‘social change’.  Moreover, he reminded that the Universitat de Valèncian though La Nau ‘is part of the heart of this project’.  And, he also pointed that this emblematic space or the Valencian Culture ‘is also the office of the Equality of the Universitat, so there is no better place to celebrate the festival this year, which is in particular focused on women’.  

6 exhibitions, 6 views of the world that surround us
This edition of PhotOn gathers six exhibitions:  ‘Little Black Dress’, by Yolanda Domínguez; ‘DesTieRRRadas’, by Pedro Armestre; ‘Pla’, by Juanita Escobar; ‘PhotOn Worldwide’, by András Polgár and Eden Bernal; the collective project ‘Agitadores de consciència’; and ‘Jarque, la cambra i la vida’. It will be inaugurated in June and has counted with the collaboration of the Museu Valencià d’Etnologia. Six views that talk about universes of all kind, coordinates and life experiences.

Conferences, screening of portfolio... and the mythical nightly screening
Among the activities that gathers the 2019 edition, we can find the conferences given by Liza Ambrossio, Anna Surinyah, Eva Máñez or Yolanda Domínguez, among others. Furthermore, the festival that offers its already mythical nightly screening outdoors, a date with a magical atmosphere that is now impossible to skip for lovers of photography. In this award ceremony, some of the sessions that will be celebrated in the cloister of ‘La Nau’ are “Jarque, Carta Blanca”, organised by Jorge Alamar and Pablo Casino; “Geografies del dolor”, by the Mexican journalist Mónica González; or the “Nit Festivals i Revistes internacionals”. In addition, the speakers that participate in this edition and the applicants to the PhotOn scholarship will show their work in the projection sessions.

#BecaPhotOn 2019
One more years, this big celebration of photography has put into operation their well-known #BecaPhotOn in 2019, one of the most important ones in Spain and endowed with 8.000 euros. On this edition the initiative has received projects from Italy, Spain, France, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Hungary or Belgium among others. Furthermore, for the first time have also participated people from Japan. 

The headquarters
To say PhotOn, also suposes to talk about how photography is all around in Valencia for a few right days. Just like that, the festival has in its headquarters ‘La Nau’, the ‘Centre Octubre de Cultura Contemporània’, the ‘Fnac’ in Sant Agustín Street and the ‘Sala Colón in Metro València, spaces that compound an expository circuit in the arteries of ‘cap i casal.’ Furthermore, the images are visible in the public transport and for it, the pieces in the exhibition ‘Agitadores de consciència’ abandon the traditional centres of exhibition to be present in the canopies of bus stops and in the posters of Metro Valencia.