Ibiza reivindicates the Mediterranean universe in the photography of Toni Catany

The exhibition hall of the Cultural Centre Can Jeroni will host, from this Wednesday, 1 April, at 7:30 pm, the exhibition ‘La meva Mediterrània. El Viatge’, one of the highlights of the second edition of the Sant Josep és Foto festival. The exhibition, organised in collaboration with the Fundación Toni Catany, will be open to the public until 3 May.

The exhibition brings together images by the Mallorcan photographer Toni Catany (Llucmajor, 1942 – Barcelona, 2013), considered one of the most distinctive and recognised figures in contemporary Spanish photography. The series presented in Sant Josep forms part of one of the artist’s most emblematic works and offers a personal vision of the Mediterranean through a visual journey across places such as Alexandria, Naples, Tetouan, Djerba, Venice, Llucmajor and Ibiza.

One of the main attractions of the exhibition is precisely the presence of a collection of photographs taken on the island during the summer of 1967, when Catany travelled to Ibiza accompanied by the writer Baltasar Porcel. Those images, with a strong costumbrista character, immortalised scenes and faces from Sant Miquel de Balanzat, as highlighted by historian Fanny Tur, who will attend the opening.

A Mediterranean journey rich in visual language

‘La meva Mediterrània’ was first presented in 1991 at the Casal Solleric in Palma, following a selection process in which Catany and his friend Antoni Garau chose 90 images from around 1,500 works produced using different formats and techniques. The result was a work of great visual richness, combining negatives, slides, calotypes, black-and-white prints, baryta prints, selenium-toned images, hand-coloured photographs and cibachromes.

After its debut in Palma, the exhibition travelled to venues such as the Palau Robert in Barcelona, the Ateneo Mercantil de Valencia, the Fotofest Houston, as well as other locations in Bastia, Terrassa, North Carolina and Cantabria. The project also resulted in a book of the same name, which received an award at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie de Arles and was recognised by the Generalitat de Catalunya as the best illustrated book of the year.

In Catany’s own words, his intention was “to offer a personal version of a geographical and cultural space that is complex and fascinating”, taking the Balearic Islands as the emotional and visual centre of that Mediterranean universe. Meanwhile, Antoni Garau emphasises that the images in this exhibition evoke a shared identity, in which “a person from the Mediterranean can never feel like a foreigner”.

The programme of Sant Josep és Foto 2026, held from 26 March to 3 May, revolves around three main themes: the Mediterranean, the human condition and everyday experience. In addition to the exhibition at Can Jeroni, the festival includes other shows at the Auditori Caló de s’Oli and Can Curt, as well as a photography congress from 16 to 19 April, photobook presentations, documentary screenings and a new edition of the photographic marathon.

Among the confirmed names for the congress are Isabel Muñoz, Lynn Goldsmith, Joe Cornish, Ai Futaki, Judith Prat, Gonzalo Azumendi and Joan Costa.

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