Felipe Romero Beltrán in Fotografia Europa
21 st edition of Fotografia Europea: Ghosts of the moment
They are the shadow of something that has lost its body, yet keep knocking at the night of the mind They are a memory that refuses to become past, a fear dressed as mystery, a presence made of absence. They dwell in the corridors of silence, live in the cracks of memory, and feed on what was left unsaid. At times they make us tremble; at others they shield us into forgetting.
They have no face, only a thousand masks. You can drive them off with the light of an idea, or listen to them to learn what they hunger for. Yet ghosts are not only a menace, they are latent presences, suspended potentials, ideas that never quite departed.
Ghosts of the Moment is an invitation to seek out the unseen and the invisible, pay attention to the whispers of what has been and what could be, revealing the silent stories that inform and guide our present while simultaneously opening up new paths for the imagination.
This edition of Fotografia Europea also explores the quiet endurance of memory – how memories fade yet refuse to vanish entirely. Each photograph holds its own echo, a spectral reminder that even as time slips away, it keeps its essence suspended. Here, the past is not gone, it breathes softly within the now.
May 7 -> June 14, 2026
corso Garibaldi 31 – 42121 Reggio Emilia – Italy
Chiostri di San Pietro
Bravo situates itself in the liminal space of the Río Bravo, a territory marked by migration where geography and identity collide. Focusing on a 270-kilometre stretch of the river, Romero Beltrán constructs an elusive visual narrative in which the river becomes a silent protagonist, shaping lives while remaining largely absent from view.
Through portraits, interiors, and landscapes, Bravo captures the suspended time of migration. Romero Beltrán’s precise visual language articulates a political reality in which meticulously staged portraiture both reveals and conceals resilience. Everyday objects within the interiors, a speaker, a mattress, a red-painted table, acquire symbolic weight, reflecting conditions of precarity and control.
Structured in three chapters, Endings, Bodies, and Breaches, the project challenges systems of classification, enclosure, and identification that govern border regimes. The audiovisual work El Cruce further emphasizes the river’s dual role as both life source and militarized boundary, intertwining scenes of baptism, fishing, and migrant testimony. With accompanying texts and an interview with the artist, Bravo emerges as a poetic yet urgent meditation on a border defined by contradiction, where hope and despair, movement and stasis coexist.
This project won the KBr Photo Award 2025, a biennial award organized by the Mapfre Foundation that includes the creation of an exhibition and a book.