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The Empalao. Valverde de la Vera
Original title: El Empalao. Valverde de la Vera
1979
Gelatin silver bromide print
Dimensions: 53 x 81 cm
Reference: ACF0482-03
Edition: 1/7
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The work by Cristina García Rodero (Puertollano, Spain, 1949) belongs to the tradition of visual anthropology, for she uses photography and graphic reportage to document religious rituals and popular festivities that express individual and collective anxieties and passions. Between the years 1975 and 1988 García Rodero basically focused on producing a huge body of work she grouped under the title España oculta (Hidden Spain). She covered hamlets, villages and cities capturing remote aspects of human geography, traditions and ancient rites that had survived well into the twentieth century. Some of her images reveal a dark, wretched and grotesque Spain, whereas others depict unusual moments of beauty and magic, even in the most impoverished settings. The truthfulness afforded by the value of the artist’s presence on the scene photographed is combined with a search for compositional precision to produce sober images, the balanced geometry of which forms a contrast with the intensity of their themes that display both the sublimity and the grotesqueness of human life.

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