Inauguration: The aura and the construction of the image. José Ortiz Echagüe

 Tuesday, October 28, 19h.
  Free

Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, artistic director of the MUN; Ángeles Aguilar, representing the photographer's family and the sponsoring company, AT Valor; and Martina Massad and Andrea Vargas, curators of the space, graduates of the master's degree in curatorial studies, will intervene.

José Ortiz Echagüe, photographer of 20th century Spain, managed to capture the essence of a Spain that, in his opinion, was at risk of disappearing in the face of incipient European modernity. Based on a meticulous construction of the image, he managed to portray the diverse cultures of the peninsula, using technical manipulation as a tool for artistic creation. Labeled and perceived as a pictorialist photographer, but self-described as a documentarian, Ortiz Echagüe turns the everyday into a perfect mise-en-scène. Thanks to a long artisanal process, the image was meddled with and somehow manipulated, probably with the desire to beautify it. This technique was Fresson's direct charcoal process, a photographic process that allows to obtain images based on mineral pigments giving the images a very characteristic texture, which makes his work easily recognizable. This ability to manipulate inherent to the process resulted in several copies until the result he desired was achieved, but these tests were not discarded, but each image became a unique piece: castles that disappear, costumes that change, and the suppression of any hint of modernity that does not fit the narrative. These prints are part of the MUN's photographic catalog.

This exhibition aims not only to present the figure of José Ortiz Echagüe and some of his most emblematic photographs, but also to investigate this more unknown aspect of his work: the creation of reality and image through the manipulation of photography.

WITH THE SUPPORT OF: