UNIDAS POR LA MISMA METRALLA

Inauguración de la Biblioteca Popular de Sans: fachada principal de la biblioteca y librería. (IISH, Autor no identificado, enero 1938)
© Ricard Martínez 2020

Un grupo de personas posan para un fotógrafo desconocido, desde el balcón de lo que hoy es una tienda de muebles. La Biblioteca de Mujeres Libres de Sants se hallaba en el núm. 45 de la carretera de Sants. La fotografia, ha estado conservada en el International Institute of Social History (IISH) de Amsterdam y actualmente está expuesta en el Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona,) dentro de la muestra Gràfica Anarquista, Fotografia i revolució social. 1936-1939. Curiosamente, sólo podemos reconocer dos mujeres, entre todos los varones que aparecen en la imagen. Una de ellas, borrosa y de negro, caminando frente a local y otra, entre los 12 hombres del balcón.

La imágen fue tomada desde la acera de enfrente, justo en el lugar donde impactó uno de los proyectiles disparados por el ejército insurrecto desde la plaza de España, contra las fuerzas populares, durante las primeras horas de la Guerra Civil española.

Hoy un solo árbol, recuerda esta historia de dos fotografías heridas por la metralla de un mismo cañonazo.

Detalle de la esquina situada en la calle de Sants con la calle de Riego. Se observan los desperfectos que ocasionó la explosión de un obús disparado desde la plaza de España. (AFB, Vicenç Pinent, 20/07/1936)
© Ricard Martínez 2020

Fighting Gazes Tour. International photographers in Spanish Civil War

Watching an air battle over the city, which was being bombed heavily by fascist planes, as General Franco's fascist troops rapidly approached. Barcelona, Spain. January 1939. © Robert Capa © International Center of Photography | Magnum Photos
Rephotograph © Ricard Martínez 2020

We are pleased to announce you the Fighting Gazes Tour, an itinerary through Barcelona as seen through the eyes of international photojournalists who witnessed the Spanish Civil War.

It is an opportunity to discover the traces of the first modern conflict scattered throughout the every day life of a cosmopolitan city. This was the first fight that was not fought only on the front. Modern weapons and strategies took war to every corner of the Country and made, for the first time, all citizens, fighters or not, become a legitimate military target. Therefore, we can perceive that powerful feeling of recovering the traces of that war, in the same place where they were photographed, while they were happening.

The Spanish Civil War was a conflict in a certain way announced, which involved the participation of the forces that shortly after would be engaged in the greatest combat on the planet, World War II. The armies developed the techniques of making a modern war. A way of exercising violence that currently is still present in modern fighting, even the so-called low intensity conflicts. But it also changed the way of showing  such a new way of making war

The tour is guided by the photographs made by such photojournalist as Robert Capa, David Seymour Chim, Albert Louis Deschamps, Hans Gutmann / Juan Guzmán, Kati Horna, John Langdon-Davis, Margaret Michaelis, Hans Namuth, Georg Reisner, or Gerda Taro, among others, although also recovers the witness off André Malraux, Lawrence Fernsworth or George Orwell

With the help of their photographs and testimonies, we will have the opportunity to place our feet where one day they put those young photojournalists. We can witness how a new way of narrating with the eyes was constructed. We will thus attend the birth of a new rhetoric that currently permeates every corner of our audiovisual culture.

The route is usually done in English and is scheduled on Wednesdays, on demand. The next one will be held on February 19.

+ info and registration: info@arqueologiadelpuntdevista.org