“Soñadores y Visionarios,” at the De Santos Gallery, is an overview of modern Spanish photography, but you won’t see any of the Spanish clichés here — no flamenco dancers, no bullfighters. Translated roughly, the exhibit’s title refers to the dreamers and visionaries of contemporary photography in Spain. The exhibit shows where Spanish photography is at the moment — and where it is headed.

Well known for her odd, surrealist style, the popular Ouka Leele contributes a bizarre black-and-white image; Peluquería (“Beauty Shop”), which depicts a retro lady with an iron on her head, defies an easy analysis. Ciuco Gutierrez and Pablo Genoves take color photos to a new level of fantasy. The thick clouds and blue sky of Gutierrez’s Paseantes create a beautiful and heavenly scene, and Genoves’s Untitled seems to leave the photography genre altogether — its impressionistic colors and shapes look much more like a Van Gogh painting than anything else. At times both mystifying and charming, “Soñadores y Visionarios” is a must for photo hounds.

This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.