at other similar competitions: the evaluation of the photographs could not be left in the hands of judging panels whose knowledge of the medium and its language was scarce at best. Those who defended the specificity of the photographic language ran the risk of turning into an “ethnic minority” within the plastic arts. The truth is that photographs had long become an additional resource for visual artists and, given the change in paradigm represented by the breakthrough of conceptual art in the ‘sixties, the use of images was not exclusively circumscribed to the domain of the photographers. But despite the inevitable crossbreeding in the visual arts that was taking place in the avant-gardes, the shift towards normalisation spelled out certain problems that hindered the fluidity of this process. Not only did the experts in plastic arts have to make an effort to update their knowledge of photography’s historical and contemporary prospect; the updating had to take place from the other side, as a necessary exercise to break up the self-absorption of a medium that for too long had been voluntarily divorced from the artistic scene. In hindsight, the analysis of this positioning has to take into account the absolutory argument of the photographers’ understandably secessionist reaction given the insistent disregard for photography displayed by museums and the art market, but it is also necessary that the photographers’ collective embark on an exercise in self-critique. For too long they have been too slow in updating their language when it comes to the topics that concern contemporary culture, and they have shown themselves to be reluctant to explore expressive territories that could leave behind the excessive self-referencing of their proposals. While the discussion was going on year after year, there were a few photographers who adopted a pragmatic and resolvent position: they began to submit their images to the young art exhibition. This gave them greater prominence and prestige while allowing them to escape the condition of being the poor brother of art that photography had traditionally exhibited. From the platform of the young art exhibition, access to visibility and to the market was substantially easier, starting with the fact that the exhibition of plastic artists took place at Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes and that of photography at the Amadís Hall. These exhibitions, which then travelled to other locations,
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