UNTIL SUNDAY 29/3
MuVIM. Quevedo, 10
Militiamen prepare the defense of the port of Valencia. Manuel Azaña gives a speech at the University of Valencia. Gerda Taro photographs the II International Writer Congress for the Defense of Culture. Soldiers collect wheat from the Valencian fields. Republicans are fighting for Teruel. They are scenes immortalized by Luis Vidal Corella, the great Valencian photojournalist who documented the Spanish Civil War and its main political and social episodes.
Photographs taken throughout the conflict were considered missing for decades, until they were located recently in the National Library of Spain and other public archives. They are the great asset of this show. In Photographic chronicle of the post-war period in Valencia, the MuVIM brings to light eighty unpublished photographs of one of the most important photographers in recent Valencian history. His legacy is the image archive (1914-1959) that make up the visual memory of the city of Valencia during the Civil War and the hardest post-war years. And its merit is doubled because, unlike other international photojournalists who were also there, with Robert Capa or Gerda Taro, with their light cameras, Corella used glass plates in elaborate machines that are exhibited in the exhibition.
The Valencian photographer also left witness to the harshness of the post-war period and to the cultural and human life of a city marked by the dictatorship. From this time we can see cyclists doing the Nazi salute before starting a stage of the Cycling Tour in Spain. Spectacular images of the Albereda motorcycle races, of women and men working in the fields and in Albufera, and the Plaça de Bous crowded to see a boxing match. But there appears the cap a serene cridant, the electric striker of Valencia C.F. (Epi, Amadeo i Mundo) and a group of children playing bullfighting. The images of Corella published in The Valencian Mercantile, ABC o The vanguard they are a valuable chronicle in black and white of the evolution of Spain under the new regime.
The acts of propaganda and legitimization of the regime reached their maximum expression during the visits of Franco and his family. receptions, tributes and ceremonies were organized to stage support for the regime. Franco, maliciously nicknamed Paco "the frog" in certain circles, took advantage of the inaugurations of engineering and infrastructure works to project an image of prosperity and economic stability that was far from the reality of the country. Corella was there taking pictures, also by Carmen Polo "la collares" doing things and his daughter, Carmencita, in jobs specific to their sex to the Charity. For Christmas, the MuVIM gives us a fascinating chronicle of the Valencia of the war and the Franco regime. S.M.
