PHotoEspana 2011 Madrid, Cuenca, and Lisbon, Spain June 1-July 24, 2011 The fourteenth edition of PHotoEspana, with the theme of "Interfaces: Port rait tire and Communication," marked a change for one of Europe's finest photography festivals. After a three-year tcnurc as artistic director, Port ugcse curator Sergio Mah was replaced by Cuban-born Gerardo Mosqucra, a co-fbunder of the Havana Biennial. In selecting a curator from the "New World" specifically one from the "art world" rather than a photography specialist--PHotoEspana signaled a move toward a more in perspective in an effort to embrace a wider look at what photography means today. "Interfaces: Portraiture and Communication," however, took place in a Spain beset by high unemployment, austerity measures, political turmoil, and mass (but peaceful) protests. PHotoEspacna has seen its budget cut from a high of ten million Euros to three million Euros--still a significant amount of money compared with many smaller photography festivals that receive no funding at all the results were a smaller, more austere festival with somewhat fewer exhibitions and catalogs, and a program more focused on linking photography to the genetal public while maintaining the intcgrity of PHotoEspana's tradition of surprising critics with unexpected takes on photography. Mosquera chose portraiture (in its many variations') as this year's theme. As he noted in his introduction, "The face is the main bearer of an individual's identity and at the same time it reflects his or her personality. ... The human being's anthropomorphizing eagerness [to embrace interpreting faces and portraiture] has meant that portraiture has been present throughout history. ... [P]hotography has been able to enhance [the face as a communications device] as never before." He continued, "the word 'interface' alludes to ... the exchange between laces: faces as spaces that touch; creating an interaction between independent and even contrary entities." As such, the face represents a dialectic between the symbol and the symbolized. For instance, venues of electronic social media (such as Facebook) allow for photographic portraiture to become a permanent part of our identities and their contact points; whether through traditional portraiture or interactive electronic media, the face is the interface between oursclves and the outside world. With approximately thirty exhibitions and more than six hundred artists of fifty-four nationalities, Mosquera and his guest curators sought to address the many ways portraits are produced and interpreted through different media, through temporal filters, and across cultures, to suggest the myriad ways we have of looking at and interpreting the face. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mosqucra chose a series of photographs of portraits painted on the funeral shrouds of mummies from the Fayun monastery in Egypt as the festival's thematic point of departure. These highly realistic paintings, presented in t he Museo Arqucologico Nacional, have the liveliness of contemporary portraiture and were considered the representation of the deceased that would accompany theirsouls on their passage to the afterlife. Mosquera likens these images to contemporary passport photographs that similarly serve as interfaces between ourselvcs and bureaucracies. At the midpoint of "Interfaces," viewers could find exhibitions of Carlos Endara's photographs at Cast de America, formally depicting a Wide range of Panamanian society from Chinese laborers to the Intrepid Cricket Club to society belles. …