‘Un Mirage nommé Ibiza’ Centre d'art de la photographie de Bergerac, until 03.01.27
.A Mirage Called Ibiza
To mark the Bicentenary of Photography, the Centre d’art de la photographie in Bergerac presents ‘A Mirage Called Ibiza’, a photographic exploration of the enduring myth and imagination of Ibiza.
More than a holiday destination, Ibiza has become an idea: an island associated with freedom, escape, pleasure and excess. Once shaped by poverty and Francoism, it was transformed from the 1960s onwards into an international destination, its identity increasingly defined by beaches, nightlife, music, bohemian counterculture and the pursuit of hedonism.
Yet the Ibiza we imagine has always been shaped as much by images and stories as by the experience of being there. Artists, writers, musicians and DJs have contributed to its mythology, while generations of photographers have documented the island's changing landscape, people and culture. The exhibition includes photography from the archives of Dave Swindells and Derek Ridgers, taken in the eighties.
A Mirage Called Ibiza takes a journey through this visual history, beginning in the 1930s and tracing the evolution of the island's image through to the present day. Bringing together photographs, films and archival documents, the exhibition reveals the many Ibizas that have existed over the decades — from a remote Mediterranean refuge and bohemian haven to the global capital of nightlife and mass tourism.
Rather than attempting to define the origins of the Ibiza myth, the exhibition explores how it has been continually constructed, transformed and reimagined through photography and popular culture.
At its heart is a tension between dream and reality, escape and exploitation, nostalgia and reinvention. Ibiza remains a place onto which successive generations have projected their desires — a paradise that exists as much in the imagination as it does on the island itself.
Exhibition curator: Benoît Lamy de La Chapelle / Head of the Bergerac Centre for Photography
