
So it was... PHotoESPAÑA Exhibition: Javier Campano. Barrios. Madrid 1976-1980
The Eagle. Completed. June 11 - September 8, 2024.
Exhibition Javier Campano. Neighborhoods. Madrid 1976-1980 showed us the transformation of Madrid in the late 70s through the close and vindictive gaze of one of its great photographers. Javier Campano (Madrid, 1950) knew how to document the corners of a city in full transformation, with great contrasts and urban problems derived from the rural exodus, the tree demographic of the previous decade and unprecedented construction development.
The inhabitants of neighbourhoods such as Orcasitas, Tetuán, Lavapiés and Barrio del Pilar opened their doors to him, making him witness to their precarious conditions and their neighbourhood struggles. Campano's camera reveals rural iconography surrounded by tall red brick blocks: children playing football in an open field in Hortaleza or clothes hanging on the facades of a village in Vallecas.
The exhibition was curated by Ana Berruguete and organized by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and the Spanish Language Office of the Community of Madrid and PHotoESPAÑA.
Exhibition
Javier Campano (Madrid, 1950), a self-taught photographer, began dedicating himself to photography in 1975, a time of political transition and creative effervescence, forming part of a new generation of photographers linked to the Madrid school Photocentro and the magazine Nueva Lente.
The exhibition, a visual account of Madrid's urban transition, featured a selection of 90 previously unpublished images by the author and two audiovisuals by the Polans Collective. Iconic images that are already part of our visual memory and are testimony to an entire generation.
Javier Campano's Madrid
His first photographic assignment on the city of Madrid was the exhibition “El Racionalismo madrileño” (Madrid Rationalism) (COAM, 1976), which he carried out together with the brothers Daniel and Rafael Zarza. From then on, together with the latter, he created the audiovisual team Ojo Móvil, which carries out altruistic actions on the situation that the neighbourhoods on the outskirts are experiencing with the idea of making their problems and living conditions visible.
Campano chooses to be a traveller in the city where he lives and walks through Madrid's neighbourhoods, infiltrating everyday life without being seen. He also approaches neighbours to listen to their demands and to make contact with the first neighbourhood associations legalised after the end of the dictatorship. The result is a visual account of Madrid's urban transition in the seventies and eighties, which form an unprecedented photographic archive, a witness to a generation.
Video library
Catalog
The catalogue brings together 90 previously unpublished images taken by Javier Campano (Madrid, 1950) during his walks through Madrid between 1976 and 1980. The photographer approached Madrid with a protesting and close-up view of neighbourhood life.
Language: Spanish.
Catalogue out of stock