Photography and society. History of photography in Spain

Photography and society from its origin to the 21^st century.

History of photography in Spain.

From 13 February to 15 April 2007.

Estudi General Room, Thesaurus Room, Martínez Guerricabeitia Room. La Nau

From Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 to 13.30 and from 16 to 20 h.

Sunday, from 10 to 14 h.

«History of photography in Spain. Photography and society from its origin to the 21st century» shows the evolution of photography in Spain since the introduction of the daguerreotype in 1839 until the border between the 20^th and 21^st centuries. In addition, the exhibition becomes an amazing graphic mirror of Spanish life as well as of the political, social, cultural, industrial and urban intra-history of the country. Through over 400 photographs from more than a hundred Spanish and foreign archives and collections, we come closer to Spain's past reality and the profound changes it has undergone, especially in the years after the democratic transition. The images depict the first shaky trains and diligences; portraits of bullfighters, politicians, writers, artists and famous soldiers; relevant events, from the Carlist Wars to the 1868 Revolution or the unfortunate campaign in Morocco; the Civil War and the long struggle for democracy; industrial and planning transformations; a gallery of popular characters like witch doctors, swindlers, mule drivers, spice sellers, peddlers, and the whole nomadic fauna of the time, including the travelling photographer.

Each of the three exhibition rooms will cover a period in the history of photography Estudi General, ‘From the onset of photography to the late 19^th century’; Thesaurus, ‘Photography and society from the beginning of the 20^th century  to the end of the Civil War’; and Martínez Guerricabeitia, ‘Photography and society from the start of Franquism to democratic consolidation’.

The exhibition has been organised by Universitat de València and Lunwerg Editores, with the support of the Ministry of Culture.

Part 1: ‘From the onset of photography to the late 19th century’

Estudi General Room

Consisting of a hundred images, the first part shows the evolution of photography from the daguerreotype and the collotype to the technical development of the collodion,  albumin and gelatin bromide, which made it possible for travel photography, portraits, and graphic journalism to appear. Photographs were selected for their technical and artistic quality and their worth as people’s testimonies, habits, trades, historic anniversaries and ways of living and dying in 19th century Spain. We can see the way our villages and towns looked, the diligences and the first trains; portraits of celebrities (bullfighters like Cúchares and Frascuelo, writers like Bécquer or Carolina Coronado, politicians like Castelar or Cánovas del Castillo, soldiers like Narváez and Espartero, actors like Julián Romea); historic events, like the Carlist Wars, the cantonal uprising of Cartagena, the 1868 revolution or the campaigns in Morocco; industrial and planning transformations; a gallery of popular characters like witch doctors, swindlers, spice sellers, peddlers, and a the whole nomadic fauna of the century, including the photographer himself.

Given their technical and documentary importance, the photographs of bridges, railways, lighthouses, viaducts and canals being built are particularly outstanding. The photographs by Charles Clifford and Jean Laurent are praiseworthy. They are both emblematic photographers of 19th century photography. But there are also foreign photographers who did not stay in Spain but left us excellent images, like R. P. Napper, the members of the Levy Company, W. Atkinson or Paul Nadar, whose works are almost unknown in Spain. In 1860, members from the first generation of Spanish photographers settled down in the country, like José Spreafico, Martínez Sánchez, Martínez Hebert, Facio, Alonso Martínez, José Rodrigo, Casiano Alguacil Garzón or Francisco Zagala. Their best works have been included in the exhibition, for instance the extraordinary images by Spreafico on the occasion of the construction of the railway from Cordoba to Málaga in the last years of the Isabel’s reign or the splendid photographs taken by Martínez Sánchez.

Part 2: ‘Photography and society from the beginning of the 20th century  to the end of the Civil War’

Thesaurus Room

The structure of part 2 is determined by the very history of Spanish photographic movements over those 40 years, from pictorialism to the Avant-gardes, through photographic portrait art, press photography and popular photography. An overview that gives us an overall picture of photography, Spanish life and its most relevant events, as well as its interrelations with political, social, and cultural life during an exciting period that came to an end with the military uprising in 1936 and the Civil War. With more than a hundred photographs, this section offers a sentimental and exciting chronicle of those years, when the secular fight between the old and the new led Spain to one of the most dramatic civil confrontations in its unfortunate contemporary history.

Some of the most important photographers of the first third of the century were portrait photographers. Their works allow us to get close to this important photographic speciality and get to know both renowned figures and anonymous street dwellers. This section presents works by Káulak, Franzen, Audouard, Alfonso or Venancio Gombáu. Likewise, at the beginning of the 20th century, photographic pictorialism appeared in Spain. Through the so-called noble emulsions, it aimed to reach the artistic status that painting had. Most of the photographers in this movement worked in a handcrafted way, using procedures that are no longer applied like gum brichromate, charcoal or bromoil. Among them are Pla Janini, Goicoechea, Antoni Campañà, and Ortiz-Echagüe. From different approaches and without the artisticity ambition  of the pictorialists, dozens of modest photographers exhaustively documented the life of peoples and individuals, like Luis Escobar, Felipe Manterola, Pacheco, Suárez or the members of the Alfonso family. Many of them worked as press photographers, leaving us their testimony of the most relevant events in the history in Spain, from the campaigns in Morocco to the Tragic Week of Barcelona, the general strike in 1917 or the Civil War. The eclipse of pictorialism gave way to movements that marked inter-war photography, like the New Objectivity or New Vision. Although their influence in Spain was scarce, their print can be seen in the works by Nicolás de Lecuona, Català Pic or Josep Renau, also included among the exhibits.

This is indeed a unique opportunity to see the works of ‘classic’ authors in the history of Spanish photography.

Part 3: ‘Photography and society from the start of Franquism to democratic consolidation’

Martínez Guerricabeitia room

The third part of the exhibition is focused on the evolution of Spanish photography during the Franco era and the consolidation of democracy up until the beginning of the 21st century. Over a hundred photographs make up a moving testimonial of the miserable situation of Spain at the time: the black market, hunger, repression, ration books... Muñoz Molina writes in the prologue to the catalogue “Here are the dirty faces, the espadrilles of poverty, the horror of the uniforms and the shaved heads of prisons, the fascist salute of the winners, the crucifixes and the portraits of Franco on the classroom wall, the sinister darkness and the old miseries of a defeated”.

But the photographs also show us the slow and hard evolution of a country fighting to bring back its dignity and leave behind the devastated territory of defeat, from the regime’s mild liberalisation and the appearance of the first resistance movements to the convulsed and hopeful eve of democracy and the consolidation of freedom and democratic normality.

The exhibition is an analytical tour around photographic movements in Franco’s and Post-Franco’s Spain, from the popular photography of an autarchic Spain to the currents of the 70s and 80s avant-garde and the digital revolution, studio portrait photography, the academicist officialism that stemmed from late pictorialism, press photography, and the documentary avant-garde of the 1950s.

This section includes works by the great masters of the time, Català Roca, Xavier Miserachs, Paco Gómez, Ramón Masats, Gabriel Cualladó, Pérez Siquier, Leopoldo Pomés, Paco Ontañón, Carlos Saura, Alberto Schommer or Sanz Lobato, members of younger generations like Cristina García Rodero, Koldo Chamorro, Ramón Zabalza, Isabel Muñoz, Marisa Flórez, Chema Madoz, García Alix, Kim Manresa, Ricky Dávila, Navia, Miguel Trillo, Xurxo Lobato, Lobo Altuna, Castro Prieto or Javier Bauluz.