The MUN publishes, for the first time in Spanish, the texts on the origin of photography in the world.

Alejandro Castellote will present the book together with the authors and translators in Pamplona on February 28; and Valentín Vallhonrat, artistic director of the MUN, will do so at ARCO in Madrid on March 9.

The Museo Universidad de Navarra will present, at its headquarters in Pamplona on Wednesday, February 28th at 7 pm, the book Searching for the impossible. A anthology of texts on the origin of photography.. The work gathers for the first time in Spanish a hundred texts on the beginning and development of this discipline that until now had not been translated from English and French into Spanish. Admission will be free, with prior withdrawal of an invitation, until full capacity is reached.

This is a critical edition in three volumes, totaling more than a thousand pages, in which the translation of the texts is complemented by a series of annotations that contextualize and explain the texts analyzed, and enrich the understanding and contextualization of terms and processes of the beginnings of the photographic technique in the nineteenth century; specifically, between 1816 and 1844.

The publication will be presented later at the ARCO fair (Madrid), as part of the Art Libris section, on Saturday, March 9 at 6:30 pm, to the expert public, contemporary art collectors and all interested persons.

Photographers Martí Llorens and Rebecca Mutell edit and comment on this publication, coordinated by the artistic directors of Museo Universidad de Navarra, Valentín Vallhonrat and Rafael Levenfeld -the latter died last November-, as well as by Rafael Llano, who collaborates in the artistic direction of the MUN. Ana Galán has been in charge of the translation.

This anthology is composed of public presentations made by scientists, newspaper articles signed by art critics, private letters, manuscripts and official communications written by the inventors of the photographic medium themselves. Taken together, they reveal the relationship between art and science that made photography one of the most outstanding developments of the 19th century.

Its importance is crucial for Museo Universidad de Navarra, as it highlights the importance of photography in the path of art towards abstraction and modern and, later, contemporary art.

Seeking the impossible. An anthology of texts on the origin of photography. is structured in three chronologically ordered volumes: Utopia deals with the moments prior to the origin of photography, the frustrated attempts and the presentiment of all that could be achieved. Among the different texts found in this volume is an essay on combustion, with a view to a new art of dyeing and painting; the description of the method for copying paintings on glass, or the daguerreotype, among other procedures and advances.

Materiality, on the other hand, talks about the period immediately prior to the public announcement of photography and, once it became a reality, the reactions that the arrival of such a unique phenomenon soon aroused in all areas. "Fixing the images of the camera obscura", by Dominique François Arago, or "Procedure for obtaining photogenic images on paper", by Hippolyte Bayard, are some of the texts that appear in this second volume.

The third volume, Praxis, describes an exciting period in which applications were found from multiple fields, as well as the challenge to create and consolidate a new profession, and the shock of the arrival of the reproducible image, which marked the progress of photography; it relates the development of the technique of an invention that was experiencing a rapid improvement and expansion, the problems that the first photographers were facing, the answers they were giving to solve them... In this third volume we find, for example, correspondence from William Henry Fox Talbot about the calotype; "Daguerrian Excursions: The most remarkable sights and monuments of the world", by Noël-Marie Paymal Lerebours; or Anna Atkins' notebook "Photographs of British seaweed: cyanotype prints".

A LECTURE BY ALEJANDRO CASTELLOTE

Independent curator, essayist and photography professor Alejandro Castellote will open the presentation with the lecture Elogio de las sombras.

Castellote has been in charge of the Photography Area of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid from 1985 to 1996, artistic director of PHotoEspaña (1998 to 2000), curator of Mapas Abiertos, Latin American Photography 1991-2002 and of C on Cities, at the 10th Venice Architecture Biennale (2006). He has been guest curator of the Photoquai Biennial (2007 and 2009), Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; Seoul Photo Fair, South Korea (2010) and Singapore International Photography Festival (2012), among many others. In 2006 he was awarded the Bartolomé Ros Prize.

THE MUN IN ARCH

The Museo Universidad de Navarra, which has recently signed an agreement with the Arco Foundation for the study of its collection, will also be present at the 43rd edition of ARCOmadrid, the international contemporary art fair that attracts artists from more than 35 countries, and which this year will be held from March 6 to 10 at the IFEMA fairgrounds.

It will do so through its presence at ArtsLibris, a section of the fair that hosts publications on art and collecting. The MUN will show there the more than 70 publications it has published since its opening in 2015. The Museum's artistic director, Valentín Vallhonrat, will present the book. Searching for the Impossible. Anthology of texts on the origin of photography, on Saturday 9 at 6:30 p.m., in the Speakers' Corner. Attendance will be free of charge, until full capacity is reached.