Image: Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía, Madrid
The Centro Andaluz de la Fotografía in Almería will premiere Juan Manuel Díaz Burgos’s ‘Tierra tomada’, a photographic project developed over two decades around a community that emerged on abandoned land near Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Opening in the institution’s Sala AFAL on 19 September 2026, the exhibition runs through 5 January 2027; an inauguration is scheduled for 18 September at 20:00.
At the centre of the project are the people involved in the community’s beginnings and the bond forged between its inhabitants and territory that initially had no defined use. The occupation of the site and subsequent construction of the first homes eventually gave way to a neighbourhood in which people of different origins and ways of life coexist.
Díaz Burgos turns his attention to the area’s residents, their daily experiences and the traces that time has left on the landscape. ‘Tierra tomada’ reflects on belonging, memory, resistance and dignity, and on people’s capacity to make a place of their own from a space.
The project extends a practice closely connected to Latin America, particularly the Dominican Republic and Cuba. A self-taught photographer described by the CAF as having a pronounced humanist vocation, Díaz Burgos has travelled and photographed in the region for decades. His work addresses everyday life, landscape and the people who inhabit it, with portraiture holding a significant role in his accounts of social and cultural realities.
‘Tierra tomada’ received production support from the Institute of Cultural Industries and the Arts of the Region of Murcia.
