Carmela García Wins 2025 National Photography Prize
Lanzarote photographer Carmela García has been awarded the 2025 National Photography Prize for her work exploring social issues through a gender and queer lens.
Lanzarote-born photographer Carmela García has won the 2025 National Photography Prize, according to the Ministry of Culture. The award includes a prize of 30,000 euros and celebrates her career, which the judges said "transforms and questions how we see society, highlighting realities that have been ignored from a gender and queer viewpoint."
Born in 1964, García has built a strong artistic career, using various methods to explore modern social and cultural issues. Her work critically re-examines history and how women are represented, looking at the connections between women in different situations.
The jury highlighted that García "reinterprets photography using modern techniques, combining video, installations, collage, and archive photography." Her work starts from a personal and feminist viewpoint, but is developed through a formal and conceptual study that broadens the boundaries of photographic images.
Her art focuses on the need to rethink and change the world, using everything from traditional and digital photography to mixed media and audiovisual installations.
Carmela García has shown her work in places like the Reina Sofía Museum, the Atlantic Center of Modern Art (CAAM), MUSAC, IVAM, and PS1 MoMA in New York, as well as in Japan, France, and the Netherlands. From 1998 to 2015, she was represented by the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery in Madrid, and she also participated in major international art fairs like Art Basel, ARCO Madrid, Paris Photo, and Frieze.
The National Photography Prize, awarded each year by the Ministry of Culture, was previously won by Jorge Ribalta. Other notable winners include Laia Abril, Cristóbal Hara, Pilar Aymerich, Ana Teresa Ortega Aznar, Montserrat Soto, and Leopoldo Pomés.