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Earlier this year, we put out an open call to the Portfoliobox community: submit your work, and five of you will exhibit at ImageNation Barcelona. Hundreds of photographers responded, from documentary shooters to fine art visionaries, street photographers to portrait artists, each bringing a distinct way of seeing the world.
After careful review, we're thrilled to announce the five photographers whose work will be printed, framed, and exhibited at ImageNation Barcelona, May 29–31, 2026.
What struck us about this selection is the range. These five portfolios couldn't be more different in subject, geography, or technique, yet each one shares the same quality: an unmistakable point of view. That's what we were looking for, and that's what visitors in Barcelona will experience.
Romain Thiery
There's a particular kind of silence in Romain Thiery's work, the silence of rooms that once held music. His selected image shows a grand piano collapsed onto the floor of an ornate, decaying room. Plaster dust fills the air as a ghost of the last note played. The symmetry of the arched windows, the rococo ceiling mouldings, and the deliberate centring of the fallen instrument, this is a photograph that understands composition as narrative.
What makes this image exhibition-worthy is its restraint. Thiery doesn't dramatise the ruin; he lets the architecture and the piano tell the story. The light is natural, soft, almost reverent. When printed and framed at exhibition scale, this image will command the room the way the piano once commanded its own.
Paulina Gallardo
Paulina Gallardo's selected image is an exercise in trust. Two young men, bare-chested, lounging on a worn Persian rug; one mid-cigarette, the other exhaling smoke into warm, amber-toned light. The scene is unhurried, unguarded. There's a closeness here that the camera doesn't intrude on but rather is invited into.
What elevates this beyond a casual portrait is the quality of light and Gallardo's instinct for the decisive moment within stillness. The colour palette, denim, burgundy, and skin tones, is rich without being oversaturated. This is the kind of portrait work that, on a gallery wall, asks the viewer to slow down and sit with the image rather than pass by.
Álvaro Vegazo
Álvaro Vegazo's selected photograph is a masterclass in street photography's core skill: the layered frame. Set against a sun-baked terracotta wall, a man in a straw hat moves through the foreground while a second figure lingers in the background, partially swallowed by shadow. A no-parking sign casts a perfect circular shadow. The red-and-white curb cuts a sharp line across the bottom of the frame.
Every element is working. The colour palette is North African heat made visible: ochre, terracotta, bleached blue sky. What makes this image sing is Vegazo's timing: a fraction of a second earlier or later, and the geometry falls apart. At exhibition scale, this photograph rewards close reading; there's always another detail to discover.
Gianluca Mortarotti
Gianluca Mortarotti has a rare gift: the ability to compose order inside chaos. His selected image captures a beach horse race, a jockey in yellow silks trots past a cluster of spectators behind an orange safety net. A family, beachgoers, a child, all absorbed in the scene, none aware they've become part of a perfectly constructed photograph.
The strength of this image lies in its layers: the foreground figures anchor us, the horse and jockey provide the subject, and the flat, calm sea stretches behind it all. It's documentary photography with the compositional rigour of a painting. On a gallery wall, the scale of this image will let viewers feel the salt air and the afternoon sun.
Evge Noriavić
Evge Noriavić's selected image is a collision of vulnerability and vastness. A solitary figure kneels on a glacier, dwarfed by jagged ice formations that climb toward an overcast sky. The palette is almost monochromatic, whites, pale blues, grey, with the human form providing the only warmth in the frame.
This is fine art photography at its most elemental: body, ice, sky. The image raises questions about the relationship between the human form and the natural landscape, between fragility and permanence. It's the kind of photograph that stops you in a gallery, the scale of the ice, the smallness of the figure, the courage of the moment. Printed large, this will be one of the most striking pieces in the exhibition.
Exhibition details
ImageNation Barcelona 2026
May 29–31, 2026
Barcelona, Spain
All five photographers are active members of the Portfoliobox community. Their exhibition spots, professional printing and framing, curation, and promotion are fully covered by Portfoliobox, as with every edition of the ImageNation program.
This is the fourth edition of the program, following successful exhibitions in Paris, London, and New York.
Stay tuned! We'll be sharing individual features on each photographer in the coming weeks, including in-depth interviews about their work and creative process.
