Room 205.16

The unprecedented press coverage the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) received made it a pivotal event in the consolidation of photojournalism. The technical advances and appearance of new camera models such as the Leica — high-quality and compact — signalled the start of a new photographic language that was put through its paces for the first time in the context of Spain.  

It was during these years that eminent war reporters arrived in Spain, such as Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour “Chim”, who all supported the Republican cause. Robert Capa’s and Gerda Taro’s depiction of the front line was groundbreaking and, risking their lives, they captured images which circulated in the international print media and became touchstones of photojournalism, for instance Capa’s Death of a Loyalist Militiaman, published in Life magazine in 1937.

Notable among the Spanish reporters — predominantly aligned with the Republic — is the figure of Catalan photographer Agustí Centelles and his reports on the Aragón front. Moreover, Antoni Campañà would document anti-fascist artistic practices linked to the Sindicat de Dibuixants Professionals de Catalunya (Union of Professional Draughtsmen of Catalonia) in photographs conserved in the so-called “red box”, rediscovered in 2018. The defence of Madrid was also recorded through the high-quality, visually impactful works of Alfonso Sánchez Portela and Juan Pando Barrero, both of whom captured the aerial bombings on the capital, the city’s transformation into a battlefield and the use of its underground train network as a shelter.

The print media was the primary source of dissemination for war photography, constituting, in its entirety, a visual archive of the past and thereby retrieving its memory.