David Galjaard, Cristina de Middel at PhotoIreland 2013

Throughout the month of July the photo world will turn its eye to PhotoIreland, the international festival of photography and image culture dedicated to promoting dialogue on photography in Ireland.

In July 2012 visitors to the festival’s Books & Magazines Fair got an early glimpse of Dutch photographer David Galjaard’s first self-published photobook, Concresco, which later earned him the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award in the First PhotoBook category. This year during PhotoIreland, Galjaard will present a solo exhibition of images from the Concreso series at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin. The show will be on view July 14–August 2.

The series paints a picture of development in Albania through photographs of the landscape, where more than 750,000 aboveground bunkers built during the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha serve as physical reminders of the country’s struggles for security during the Communist era. You can read more about David Galjaard and his Concresco series in an interview we conducted with the photographer last fall following the announcement of his First PhotoBook prize.

Cristina De Middel, from the series The Afronauts.

Also on view at the Copper House Gallery will be documentary photographer, artist, and PhotoBook Awards finalist Cristina de Middel’s first self-published book The Afronauts. The volume is a subjective reimagination of the failed 1964 initiative to launch the first African space program in the country of Zambia.

The now sold-out book, which was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Prize, is comprised of Middel’s staged color photographs, sequenced alongside manipulated documents, drawings, and reproductions of original texts that documented this now anecdotal moment in Zambian history. Known for her play with reconstructions that blur the border between reality and fiction, Middel’s The Afronauts recontextualizes these elements to create a fictional portrait of that national dream.

Both Concresco and The Afronauts will be on view at the Copper House Gallery, Dublin, July 14–August 2, 2013, as part of PhotoIreland Festival 2013.

Featured image: David Galjaard, from the series Concresco.