'Time' for Spanish photo festival to open

Spain's biggest international photography festival, PHotoEspana, opened in Madrid Wednesday with works by 379 artists from 42 countries dedicated to the theme of "time".

The 13th edition of the event, which drew some 700,000 visitors last year, runs until July 25 and includes works by Hungarian-born artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy as well as American photographers Harold Edgerton and Helen Levitt.

Madrid's ICO Foundation will host the first anthology of works by Levitt since her death last year aged 96.

Her photographs focused on urban life, mainly of New York, capturing everyday scenes which illustrate the social conditions of the era.

Images taken in New York during the deindustrialisation in the 1970s by Levitt and other photographers such as Zoe Leonard and Gordon Matta-Clark are the focus of an exhibit at the Reina Sofia museum.

The Casa America will feature a retrospective of works by Adriana Lestido, a key figure in contemporary Argentinean photography, from her 30-year career.

The event will also include an exhibit of photographs by French-Argentine photographer Daniel Mordzinski of French and Latin American writers such as Patrick Modiano and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.

"These are daring photos but that are respectful of the writers, a humble tribute to the wonderful world of literature," said Mordzinski who is known for his photographs published in top-selling daily Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Most of the exhibits will be staged in the Spanish capital but a handful will be held in Cuenca on central Spain and in the Portuguese capital Lisbon.