KBr Fundació MAPFRE Barcelona presents the first retrospective exhibition of Consuelo Kanaga in Europe

Fundación MAPFRE has presented the exhibitions Consuelo Kanaga: catching the spirit and The domestic camera. The photographic hobby in Catalonia (c. 1880-1936), with which it continues its usual line of programming: on the one hand, to show the work of contemporary photographers of an important trajectory who, due to the quality of their works, they deserve recognition and vindication and, on the other hand, deepen the knowledge of Catalan photographic archives and collections.

Consuelo Kanaga: catching the spirit

Consuelo Kanaga (1894-1978) is considered a fundamental figure in the history of modern photography both for her contribution to the recognition of women in this field and for the intensity with which her images make the viewer face some of the great social issues, marginalization, poverty, racial harassment or inequality, that have survived from his time to ours, especially the situation of the African American population in the United States.

Consuelo Kanaga is one of the few women who managed to practice photojournalism professionally, especially at a date as early as the 1910s in the United States. She was also one of the few women who maintained a close relationship with American avant-garde circles, both in San Francisco, with the f.64 Group, and in New York, with the Photo League. Despite the notoriety he achieved in his lifetime, his work is still, surprisingly, little known. This exhibition aims to contribute conclusively to the recognition that Kanaga's work undoubtedly deserves.

The exhibition, organized by the Brooklyn Museum in New York in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is made up of nearly 180 photographs and various documentary material from the archive that traces and contextualizes the work of this photographer American and presents some of his iconic images such as She is a Tree of Life or the portraits Young Girl in Profile and Kenneth Spencer. Likewise, it affects the role of photography in the representation of the African-American world. L

Antoni Rosal Grelon. Grup d'homes al voltant d'un petit estany, dècades del 1910-1920. Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya (ANC), Fons Antoni Rosal Grelon, Sant Cugat del Vallès

The home camera. The photographic hobby in Catalonia (c. 1880-1936)

With the domestic camera sample. The photographic hobby in Catalonia (c. 1880-1936), the foundation presents a high point in the history of Catalan photography: that of the beginnings of the amateur practice of the discipline in the 1880s and its evolution until the 'outbreak of the Civil War in the summer of 1936. Photography was the most common visual means of representing people and their surrounding reality throughout the 20th century. This exhibition offers a thematic journey through the history of amateur photography in Catalonia in the period between 1880 and 1936. The nearly three hundred pieces that make it up (photographs, objects and period documents) have been gathered thanks to the collaboration of seventeen public institutions (including archives, museums, libraries and research centers) and nine private collections.

However, mass access to this medium was not effective until the end of the 19th century. During this period, the technical improvements introduced in the devices, as well as the appearance of the new emulsion of silver in gelatin, more stable, fast and economical, facilitated access to this discipline to a very wide public, while at the same time abandoned its purely artisanal use to enter the dynamics of industrial production and consumption.

The camera, no longer needing a tripod, became another accessory of modern times. Businesses, the press and cultural organizations, as well as people of different social classes, genders and ages, overturned their practice, whether they were simple fans, or amateurs, as the most ambitious fans were called at the time photography practice. The camera was introduced into the domestic space of thousands of people and, since then, has helped shape ways of grasping reality and expressing social and cultural aspirations of its time. The images made with the domestic camera, far from being an unsophisticated and uninteresting form of popular culture, condensed countless social signs, practical goals and aesthetic references.

With the expression "domestic camera" reference is made to the amateur use of the photographic camera and the images that derive from it, that is to say, created outside of professional production logics, but without this meaning that in some at the time it was not traded or that they did not occasionally participate in other markets such as the art market. The photographs produced by fans historically brought together affective and communicative dynamics of different social groups and provide valuable information about the past and about the different ways of seeing the world at the time.