Mercedes Hausmann, LABASAD Lecturer, Exhibits “Adelaida” at the National Museum of Romanticism as Part of PHotoESPAÑA 2025
The exhibition, created in collaboration with Jorge Salgado, is on display from 6 June to 14 September and reconstructs the life of a woman who defied the conventions of her time from Lavapiés.
At LABASAD, we proudly celebrate the participation of our instructor Mercedes Hausmann — photographer, digital retoucher, and instructor of the Online Master’s in Photographic Retouching and Digital Postproduction in Spanish— in the Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA 2025. Her exhibition “Adelaida”, produced alongside Jorge Salgado, can be visited from 6 June to 14 September at the National Museum of Romanticism (Madrid), one of the festival’s iconic venues.
“Adelaida” is an artistic project that delves into the traces of memory to restore the story of Adelaida Martínez-Corera, a woman who, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, quietly broke through the social boundaries of her era. A widow, mother, and central figure in her community, she took on the management of a building in Lavapiés, becoming an active agent in a society that confined women to the private sphere.
In Adelaida, Hausmann and Salgado intertwine the documented with the imagined. The Hausmann photographic archive — consisting of carte de visite and cabinet portraits — converses with images generated through artificial intelligence, which fill the gaps in the visual history with scenes that were never recorded but might have existed. This fusion of archive and AI broadens the imaginative representation of femininity in history and invites a critical, sensitive, and contemporary rethinking of women’s place.
The exhibition is further enriched by original documents that contextualise Adelaida’s life during the transition to modernity. The National Museum of Romanticism, together with the Ministry of Culture and PHotoESPAÑA, hosts this exhibition as part of a festival that annually transforms Madrid into the international epicentre of photography.
Mercedes Hausmann brings to this project her extensive experience in the field of imagery, along with a unique sensitivity for working with historical archives and contemporary digital processes. Graduated in Fine Arts and trained at institutions such as EFTI, Workshop Experience, and Lens, she has spent over a decade engaged in personal projects, commercial commissions, and teaching. Among her notable collaborations is the digital postproduction direction of 365, the most ambitious photographic series by acclaimed photographer Eugenio Recuenco, exhibited in Madrid, Berlin, and Shanghai.
This unmissable event not only highlights Mercedes Hausmann’s talent and dedication as an artist but also strengthens the connection between teaching at LABASAD and the most innovative and socially engaged photographic practices of today.
For more information about the Adelaida exhibition, opening hours, tickets, and related activities, please visit the official PHotoESPAÑA 2025 website.