9 September
lecture series
AROUND CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE RONCAL VALLEY
Roncal in black and white: photographers in the Roncal Valley
José Ignacio Riezu Boj
University of Navarra
The Roncal Valley can be considered an emblematic place when it comes to representing Navarre. Its villages, people and landscapes have always formed part of the symbolism of Navarre. In fact, at one point its characteristic clothing was chosen by the Diputación de Navarra to represent the clothing of Navarre. These reasons have made the human and physical landscape of Roncal goalof photographers who want to capture a part of Navarre. Any photographer wishing to showcase Navarre has the need to immortalise the landscape of Navarre.
In this workI am going to show the work of 7 photographers who tried to capture the essence of Roncal. I have chosen these 7 artists among many others because they are a fairly representative sampleof the photography that was done in the valley in the first half of the 20th century.
First photographs of Roncal
Before talking about photographers, I would like to show what I consider to be the first photographic images of the Roncal Valley. They are studio photographs of Roncal people wearing typical Roncal clothing. They are snapshots taken from the 1960s onwards, when the great boom in studio photography appeared in the West. Photographers set up their programs of studyin the country's major cities, forcing clients to travel to the place where their portraits were taken. In these decades, photography could be considered a luxury item that not everyone could afford. Only families with a certain purchasing power could have their portraits taken, and only on special occasions such as births, weddings or deaths. The photographs had a thick cardboard backing that gave them consistency and on the back of which there were beautiful anagrams of the photographic programs of studywhere the snapshots were taken. The images depict newlywed couples, family groups, portraits of the bride or groom, couples with their new-born child, etc. In all of them, the portrait subjects are dressed in their best clothes, and in many cases these are the costumes of Roncalesa. Because of these characteristics and because we often know the sitters, it is relatively easy to date them; the ones I have studied are dated between 1865 and 1898.
In my researcharound the valley (mainly Roncal) I have found photographs of these characteristics taken in several programs of studyin Pamplona, Zaragoza and a studio in Pau (France). I consider them important to preserve not only because they are part of the family reportof a house but also because they are part of the collective reportof the Roncal Valley, showing one of the few testimonies that remain of the exclusive way of dressing of the Roncal people in the 19th century, which has now disappeared.
Francisco de la Heras (Torre de Valdealmendras, Guadalajara, 1886 - Jaca, 1950)
The first photographer I would like to introduce is Francisco de la Heras, who, although born in Guadalajara, trained as a photographer in one of the most famous photographic establishments in Zaragoza, that of Anselmo Coyne from Pamplona. In 1910 he moved to live in Jaca (Huesca) where he opened a photography studio that is still run by his grandchildren (Foto Peñarroya). De las Heras took countless reports and photographs of Jaca society as well as landscapes and towns in Huesca. His splendid reports on the day of Santa Orosia in Jaca in 1922, the military uprising of 1930 or the festivities in Anso and Hecho stand out. With his photographs, he published a multitude of postcards, many of them grouped in booklets. One of these collections is dedicated to the Roncal Valley and features 19 photographs of views of the different villages in the valley and a final one with a couple dressed in Roncal costume. Many editions of this collection, which could be dated to around 1912, were made.
Teodoro Ruiz de Galarreta (Pamplona, 1884 - 1954)
Teodoro was not a professional photographer, he was a businessman from Pamplona who was very fond of photography. Throughout his life he built up a large collection of photographs, a collection that was sold a few years ago to a Valencian antique dealer. The peculiarity of Ruiz de Galarreta's photographs is that they are stereophotographs taken with stereoscopic machines and with the particularity of using glass as a support and the positive technique. These photographs, when viewed with a stereoscope, allow us to observe a three-dimensional image. The subjects of these photographs are very varied, mainly excursions/trips or family events. Among this large collection of photographs I have found 10 copies with images of the Roncal Valley. All of them are dated between 1913 and 1916 and show family trips to Burgui, Roncal and Isaba. They show Teodoro himself and his brother-in-law taking photographs with the locals or on the streets of these three villages.
José Roldán Bidaburu (Mondragón, 1860 - Pamplona, 1934)
Professional photographer who founded around 1880 a photographic establishment in Pamplona at associationwith Félix Mena called "Roldan y Mena". At the beginning of the 20th century the studio was disbanded, and Roldan continued alone, although he later joined forces with his son.
In the summer of 1924, the Diputación de Navarra commissioned him to produce a report on Navarrese clothing for the exhibitionof Regional Costume that the Royal Academy of History was organising in Madrid. José Roldan travelled to Roncal, Urzainqui and Isaba on different days at the end of August and beginning of September. He gathered in each village a groupgroup of villagers dressed in their own original costumes, although they were no longer in use. With these groups made up of men and women of different ages, he staged different scenes in the three villages mentioned above, all of them outdoors in squares, streets or the Roncal cemetery. In these stagings, some of which were quite elaborate, the photographer tried to evoke different situations of traditional Roncal life, such as cheese making, spinning, a wedding, a game of mus, caring for a baby, a groupof young women reading a letter, courtship between young men, a meetingof neighbours, etc. Many of these photographs were published in September and October 1924 in Diario de Navarra. The Diputación sent the photographs to the exhibitionheld in Madrid in 1925 and published many of them in a series of postcards called "Navarra Artística" (Artistic Navarre), which were widely distributed.
They are delightful photographs, many of which are kept in Fernando Hualde's private file, which show the Roncalesa costume in its full splendour. Although they were no longer worn, the memory of them was still very much alive and in almost every house they were kept as a reportof the past splendour of the Roncalese. A detailed study has yet to be made of these photographs in terms of their issue(I have located several that were not catalogued) as well as their aesthetics. I think it is one of the most important ethnographic reports taken in pre-war Navarre, especially considering that he not only photographed scenes of Roncal but of many other valleys and places, mainly in Pyrenean Navarre.
José Ortiz Echagüe (Guadalajara, 1886 - Madrid, 1980)
An engineer who created the companies SEAT and Construcciones Aeronáuticas (CASA), he is the most widely recognised Spanish photographer in the world, despite being an amateur photographer. Ortiz Echagüe is the most prominent representative of the so-called Spanish photographic pictorialism, a trend that seeks to create a photograph closer to painting by means of effects and retouching carried out on the printing press.
Ortiz Echagüe tries to photograph a Spain that he considers to be disappearing, the people, the religiosity, the costumes and the types. He won numerous prizes and held many national and international exhibitions. Many of his photographs were published in four books that were very successful and had numerous editions: "España. Tipos y trajes", "España. Pueblos y Paisajes", "España mística" and "España. Castles and fortresses".
The first of these books contains several photographs, mainly of women, dressed in the costume of Roncales. The images are notable for their blurring and blurring, typical of pictorialism, which, together with the poses of the sitters, transmit an intimate and mystical effect to the viewer. Most of his photographic bequestcan be found in the Museo Universidad de Navarra.
Diego Quiroga y Losada, Marquis of Santa María del Villar (Madrid ,1880 - San Sebastián, 1976)
The Marquis of Santa María del Villar devoted himself to promoting Spanish tourism through photography from 1920 onwards. After the Civil War, he worked as a photographer for the General Administrationde Regiones Devastadas. He published countless articles and photographs in the most widely-circulated newspapers and magazines and organised numerous exhibitions. He was initially a follower of the pictorialist movement, led by Ortiz-Echagüe, but soon abandoned it in favour of a more naturalistic, ethnographic and documentary style of photography.
He took many photographs of Navarre, among them the great series of photographs he took of the rafts from Roncalesa on their descents down the river Esca, for which he won numerous prizes. In many interviews he remarked that he was proud to have descended in 1916 in a raft as far as Tortosa. His landscapes with shepherds and flocks and his images of the squares and bridges of the different villages in the valley are also very well known.
He died in San Sebastián in ruins. His photographic filewas bought during his lifetime by his friend Javier Beunza, a photographer from Sangües, and today it is kept at fileReal y General de Navarra.
Indalecio Ojanguren Arrillaga (Eibar, 1887 - 1972)
Known as "the Eagle Photographer", a photographer by profession, he set up a studio in Eibar. entranceHe carried out his photographic work throughout the first half of the 20th century for many media and newspapers until well into the 1960s. A great mountaineer, he travelled all over the mountains of the Basque Country and Navarre, photographing them. His collection of photographs (more than 8000) was acquired by the Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa in 1966(http://www.guregipuzkoa.eus).
Among the photographs he took in the valley, we can highlight an extensive report on the tribute of the three cows dated 1934 and various photographs of the villages of the valley such as Isaba, Roncal, Vidangoz, Garde and Burgui.
Nicolás Ardanaz Piqué (Pamplona, 1910 - 1982)
He was a non-professional photographer. He has been considered one of the most important Navarrese photographers. His activity as a photographer spanned the decades 1930-1970, focusing on Navarre, its landscapes, villages, mountains, rivers and groves, its customs and way of life, as well as its fiestas (particularly those of San Fermín), without forgetting to capture the popular subjectand the topicof children. Founder of the Agrupación Fotográfica y Cinematográfica de Navarra in June 1955, he worked as partnerfor various media (Sombras, Pregón, Vida Vasca, Cultura Navarra and the Pamplona periodical press of his time). Professionally, he worked in the family drugstore in Calle Mayor.
In Roncal, his photographs of shepherds, shepherds' huts, sheep and valleys are famous, as are his photographs of the villages and typical poses in Roncal costume. His photographic filecan be found in the Museum of Navarre.
Bibliography
Asunción Domeño Martínez de Morentin. The photography of José Ortiz-Echagüe: technique, aesthetics and subject matter. 2000, Government of Navarre.
Carlos Cánovas and Ramón Esparza. Nicolás Ardanaz, photographs. 2000, Museum of Navarre.
Carlos Cánovas. Notes for a history of photography in Navarre. 1989. Panorama Collection, Government of Navarre.
Carlos Cánovas. Navarre/Photography. 2012. Government of Navarre.
Fernando Hualde. Costumes from Navarre. 2013, Ed Lamiñarra.
Francisco Javier Beunza. Carlos Cánovas, Julio Caro Baroja and Jesús Elósegui. Marquis of Santa María del Villar. Photographs of Navarre. 1982, Provincial Council of Navarre.
Luis Azpilicueta and José María Domench. Navarre in black and white. 2000, Ed Espasa Calpe.
Jorge Latorre Izquierdo. Santa María del Villar, tourist photographer and the origins of Spanish photography. 1998. Government of Navarre.
Various authors. Ortiz Echagüe. Photographs 1903-1964. 1998, University of Navarra.
Various authors. De las Heras. Una mirada al Pirineo (1910-1945) 2000, Ed Pirineum publishing house.
Various authors (María Concepción García Gainza and Ricardo Fernández Gracia coordinators) Fotografías en Navarra; fondos, colecciones y fotógrafos. 2011, Cuadernos de la Catedra de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro nº 6.