La noche fotográfica

¿Se puede fotografiar la oscuridad? En el último Babelia Antonio Muñoz Molina escribe sobre la exposición de fotografías que con el tema Night Vision: Photography After Dark se inauguró hace poco en el Metropolitan Museum. Desgraciadamente, en la web de la exposición se publican tan solo unas pocas, y aun estas no muy interesantes. Por eso, nos ha parecido que podíamos ilustrar nosotros el texto de Muñoz Molina con una selección propia. Salimos de la exposición neoyorquina para adentrarnos en aquellas noches olvidadas, de un tiempo que ya solo pervive en estas imágenes.

Michael Kenna: Vías de tren

En lo más lejano de mi memoria hay oscuridades nocturnas anteriores a la omnipresencia de la iluminación eléctrica. Recuerdo bombillas débiles en algunas esquinas y lámparas con pantalla metálica colgando de cables tendidos a través de las plazas, moviendo juegos de grandes sombras y claridades rojizas cuando las agitaba el viento en las noches de invierno. Recuerdo ir bien abrigado en brazos de mi padre, una bufanda de lana picante tapándome la boca, y sentir vértigo al doblar el cuello para mirar el cielo inundado por muchas más estrellas de las que he vuelto a ver nunca, vibrando en el fulgor de niebla de la Vía Láctea.

Carlos y Miguel Vargas: Puente en San Lázaro, Arequipa, Perú, 1926

En otra época, muchos años después, el fotógrafo Ricardo Martín captó la luz de las bombillas en alguna de aquellas esquinas, todavía intocadas, en los mismos lugares donde yo había jugado de niño, donde los niños nos quedábamos jugando hasta bien entrada la noche, hasta que las madres se asomaban para llamarnos porque la cena estaba preparada. En esas plazuelas tan bien provistas de sombra nocturna, tan limpias todavía de faros y motores de coches, el fin de la claridad del día traía consigo el momento de contar historias: cuentos de aparecidos, rumores sobre la presencia de una fraternidad de tísicos que se alimentaban de sangre fresca de niños, de la Tía Tragantía o del Hombre del Saco, al que en nuestra tierra llamaban también el Tío Mantequero. Había un cierto portal de una casa desierta al que la luz de la esquina no llegaba, y en el que era posible que se agazapara una bruja. El desafío era armarse de valor y cruzar a solas la zona de negrura, cantando para darse ánimos:

Ay qué miedo me da
De pasar por aquí,
Si la bruja estará
Esperándome a mí.

Brassaï: Cuneta, París

Ahora comprendo que era una noche antigua, preindustrial, que se oscurecía del todo en las ocasiones nada infrecuentes en las que se iba la luz. En la imaginación literal de los niños las metáforas más comunes del idioma se fijan con una precisión de aguafuertes: al fondo de una callejón, más allá de la bombilla de la esquina, era verdad que estaba tan oscuro como la boca de un lobo: el gran lobo de fauces abiertas de los cuentos y de las pesadillas, la boca de negrura que lo engulliría a uno si se aventuraba más lejos de lo que debía, o si le tocaba la mala suerte de encontrarse con una de aquellas presencias de la mitología popular infantil, símbolos tal vez de esos adultos crueles, fantasmales, verdaderos, que inmemorialmente se han cebado con la debilidad de los niños. Una abuela encorvada, los hombros cubiertos con una toquilla de lana, la cara oculta a medias por un pañuelo atado a la barbilla, podía ser una bruja o proyectar sobre la calle empedrada la silueta de una bruya. Y había hombres inexplicables y siempre algo siniestros que se nos acercaban cuando íbamos solos para preguntarnos algo, o que se nos arrimaban a los muslos en la otra oscuridad del gallinero de los cines.

André Kertész: Sin título, Budapest

El reverso de aquellas noches de tiniebla llegaba una vez al año en las iluminaciones de la feria, que por comparación, por falta de costumbre, nos parecían mucho más cegadoras de lo que serían en realidad, las guirnaldas de bombillas pintadas de colores, el vértigo de las luces de la noria, los reflectores que exageraban el colorido de los cartelones del circo. Pero se apartaba uno de la feria, casi dormido de cansancio, de la mano de sus padres, y a la vez que se amortiguaba el ruido de los altavoces de las tómbolas y de las músicas de los carruseles se hacía más evidente el regreso a la oscuridad cuando se caminaba de nuevo por los callejones habituales, resonantes con los tacones de los duros zapatos de domingo que se habían puesto los adultos, tan poco acostumbrados a ellos.

André Kertész: Bar Daisy, París, 1934

Sin que nos diéramos cuenta, muy gradualmente, la noche se fue llenando de claridad en los mismos años en los que salíamos de la infancia. La noche luminosa era el gran espejismo con el que nos atraían las ciudades. No olvido nunca el impacto del niágara de luces de la Gran Vía de Madrid la primera noche que llegué a ella doblando una esquina de la plaza de España, mi primera noche de casi adulto que cumplirá dieciocho años dentro de unos días y acaba de dejar su maleta todavía cerrada sobre la cama del cuarto de pensión en el que increíblemente va a vivir por su cuenta a partir de ahora, dueño de sus actos y de sus pasos, dócil a la llamada y a la palpitación de la ciudad.

Alfred Stiegliz: Desde la ventana que da al patio

En un par de salas recónditas y muy poco iluminadas del Metropolitan hay una exposición que tiene algo de historia natural de la noche del siglo XX, de esas tinieblas que a través de la fotografía y del cine en blanco y negro han influido en nuestra imaginación hasta el punto de modelar también nuestros recuerdos. Arte de la luz, la fotografía se volcó muy pronto en la exploración de la noche, en cuanto los medios técnicos lo permitieron: películas más sensibles, cámaras portátiles, flashes.

Paul Martin: Noche húmeda en el paseo del río, 1895-96

Los bulevares de la ciudad burguesa, los escarapates, los faroles de gas, los callejones solitarios, dieron lugar a la figura del caminante curioso y haragán, inventor de historias de desconocidos. Baudelaire y Jack el Destripador son criaturas nocturnas del siglo XIX. Liberado del encierro en su estudio, con la cámara al hombro, con su instinto a la vez primitivo y moderno de merodeador, el fotógrafo de la noche es un personaje del siglo XX, un Tío Mantequero cuya silueta es proyectada sobre los adoquines por la luz de una farola, un espía de las vidas ocultas de otros, un explorador del país desconocido en el que se convierte una gran ciudad en cuanto cae la noche, sobre todo esa noche ambigua que dura hasta el final de los años cincuenta, hasta la llegada en la fotografía en color.

Brassaï: Hermoso Pont Neuf

Brassaï en París, Bill Brandt en Londres, Josef Sudek en las deshabitadas noches comunistas de Praga, la intrépida Berenice Abbott subida a las terrazas de los edificios más altos de Nueva York para tomar fotografías en cuanto cae la noche anticipada de diciembre, entre el momento en que se encienden las luces en todas las oficinas todavía llenas de gente y el otro momento en que los edificios se quedan vacíos y las luces empiezan a apagarse. Weegee alumbrando con el descaro clínico del flash un cadáver que parece flotar hinchado boca arriba sobre un charco de sangre o una cabeza cortada que la policía de Nueva York acaba de descubrir al pie de los pilares de hierro de un tren elevado.

Margaret Bourke-White: Centro de Moscú con trazadores antiaéreos, 1941

Esa es la noche fotográfica que se parece a mis recuerdos, o a recuerdos conjeturales que bien pudieran ser míos: la cúpula de la catedral de San Pablo iluminada por la Luna llena y rodeada de edificios espectrales en ruinas después de una incursión de los bombarderos alemanes, en una foto de Bil Brandt; el horizonte nocturno del mar fotografiado por Hiroshi Sugimoto, a la vez impenetrable y etéreo, como un cuadro de Rothko. En alguna parte, y no solo en esas fotos, perdura la noche sin fisuras de la memoria más antigua.

Josef Sudek: Paseo nocturno, Praga

The photographic night

Is it possible to take photos of the darkness? In the latest edition of the Spanish Babelia Antonio Muñoz Molina writes about the photo historical exhibition Night Vision: Photography After Dark, recently opened in the Metropolitan Museum. Unfortunately, on the site of the exhibition they have published only a few photos, and rather uninteresting ones at that. Therefore we illustrate with our own photo historical selection the text of Molina which anyway moves away from the New York exhibition to return to those one-time, forgotten, archaic nights which are still present on these pictures.

Michael Kenna: Night binaries

In the depth of my memory still there lives a nocturnal darkness from before the ubiquity of electric lighting. I remember the weak bulbs on the street corners and the lamps with metal screen hanging from the cables stretched across the squares and projecting large, agitated shadows and red spots when waved in the wind on winter nights. I remember being carried in the arms of my father, well wrapped in clothes, a wool scarf covering my mouth, and feeling dizzy when looking up to watch the sky flooded with much more stars than I have seen ever since, exulting in the foggy glow of the Milky Way.

Carlos and Miguel Vargas: Bridge in San Lázaro, Arequipa, Peru, 1926

In another era, many years later, the photographer Ricardo Martín caught the light of the bulbs on some of those still untouched street corners where I had played as a child, where we children used to play until late at night, until the mothers leaned out of the windows to call us because the supper was ready. On these little squares, so abundantly provided with the shadows of the night, and still so free from the lights and motors of cars, the end of the daylight gave way to telling stories: ghost fables, rumors about a locally active club of vampires who were feeding on the fresh blood of children, about Aunt Carry-Away or the Man with the Sack, who in our region was also called Uncle Butter. There was a deserted house with a doorway to where the light of the street corner did not reach, and where most possibly a witch was lurking. It was a great challenge to gather all our courage to cross the areas of darkness by chanting to give encouragement for ourselves:

Ay qué miedo me da De pasar por aquí, Si la bruja estará Esperándome a mí.

Oh, how I’m scared To pass by here Where the witch is Waiting for me.

Brassaï: Gutter, Paris

Now I understand that it was an ancient, pre-industrial night, completely obscure on those absolutely not rare occasions when the light was gone. In the imagination of children the most common metaphors of the language are fixed with the precision of etching: at the bottom of a lane, even farther off the corner lamp, it was really as dark as in the mouth of a wolf: of the big wolf with open mouth from the tales and nightmares, the mouth of blackness that would swallow anyone venturing further than he should or anyone stricken by the bad luck of encountering one of those creatures of the infantile popular mythology, symbols of the real and cruel adults who since times immemorial have exploited the weakness of children. A stooped old woman, her shoulders covered with a woolen scarf, her face half hidden by a scarf tied under her chin, could be a witch or at least project onto the cobblestones the silhouette of one. And there were inexplicable and somehow always sinister people who approached us to ask something when we were alone or who pressed their thighs to ours in that other darkness of movie theaters.

André Kertész: Untitled, Budapest

The reverse of those nights of darkness came once a year in the illuminations of the fair which, by lack of habit, seemed to us much more blinding than they were in the reality, with the garlands of colored bulbs, the vertigo of the lights of the giant wheel, the reflectors that exaggerated the sharp colors of the circus posters. But as one was leaving the fair, almost asleep from exhaustion, at the hands of his parents, and as the noise of the loudspeakers, of the tombola and of the music of the carousels gradually faded away, it was more evident that we returned to the darkness of the well known alleys, resonant with the heels of the tough Sunday shoes put on by the adults, so little accustomed to them.

André Kertész: Daisy Bar, Paris, 1934

Without our noticing it, very gradually, the night was being filled with clarity in the same years in which we were leaving behind childhood. The bright night was the great illusion with which the cities attracted us. I never forget the impression of that Niagara of lights in the Gran Vía of Madrid the first night I saw it by turning the corner of Plaza de España, the first night of an almost adult boy who in a few days would turn eighteen and has just left his still closed suitcase in the bed and boardroom where, almost incredibly, he would be going to live on his own from then on, as a master of his own acts and his steps, following the call and the heartbeat of the city.

Alfred Stiegliz: From the back window

In a couple of hidden and very poorly lit rooms of the Metropolitan there is an exhibition on the natural history of the nigths of the 20th century, of that darkness which through black and white photography and movie influenced our imagination to the extent of also modeling our memories. Photography, the art of light turned to the exploration of the night as soon as its technical means, more sensitive films, handheld cameras and flashes made it possible.

Paul Martin: A wet night on the embankment, 1895-96

The boulevards of the bourgeois city, the shop-windows, the gas lamps, the lonely alleys shaped together the figure of the curious and leisurely walker, the inventor of stories on strangers. Baudelaire and Jack the Ripper are the nocturnal creatures of the 19th century. Freed from the imprisonment of his studio, with the camera on his shoulder, with an instinct at once primitive and modern of the predator, the photographer of the night is a character of the 20th century, an Uncle Butter whose silhouette is projected onto the pavement by the light of the lamps, a spy of the hidden lives of others, an explorer of the unknown country that a big city is converted into, as soon as the night falls, and above all of this ambiguous night that lasts until the end of the fifties, until the arrival of color photography.

Brassaï: Beautiful Pont Neuf

Brassaï in Paris, Bill Brandt in London, Josef Sudek in the uninhabited communist nights of Prague, the intrepid Berenice Abbott on the terraces of the tallest buildings of New York to take pictures as the early December night falls, between the moment when lights are lit in all the offices still filled with people and the other moment when the buildings remain empty and lights begin to be turned out. Weegee illuminating with the clinical disrespect of the flash a corpse that seems to float face up a puddle of blood, or a severed head that the police of New York has just discovered at the foot of the iron pillars of an elevated train.

Margaret Bourke-White: Central Moscow with antiaircraft gunners, 1941

This is that photographic night which is similar to my memories, or to those conjectural memories that could be mine: the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral illuminated by the full moon and surrounded by spectacular buildings in ruins after a raid by German bombers on a photo by Bill Brandt; the night horizon of the sea photographed by Hiroshi Sugimoto, at once impenetrable and ethereal like a painting by Rothko. Somewhere, and not just in these photos, the seamless night of the most archaic memories is still living on.

Josef Sudek: Night walk, Prague

Semana Santa

Vaya, esta vez nos olvidamos de dirigir a tiempo la atención hacia la Semana Santa de Úbeda, tal como hicimos el año pasado. Estas fiestas son verdaderamente de las más arraigadas e imponentes de Europa, y en ellas se involucra toda la ciudad. Empiezan oficialmente el Domingo de Ramos, pero las dieciocho cofradías de origen medieval se preparan durante meses, casi durante todo el año anterior. En su blog documentan día a día los acontecimientos con imágenes, texto y vídeo. El año pasado ya presentamos en detalle el orden de las procesiones y su desarrollo a lo largo de la semana, pero cada año hay también novedades. Con las líneas evocadoras del hijo ilustre de Úbeda Antonio Muñoz Molina en su novela Sefarad entendemos cuánto significan estas celebraciones para la ciudad y para toda España:

We have forgot to tell you in due time to follow with attention the events of the Holy Week in Úbeda just like we did in the last year. This series of celebrations which belongs to the most traditional and largest ones in all Europe and which sets all the town in motion, officially began on Palm Sunday. However, the eighteen confraternities of medieval origin have been preparing to it for months, or rather throughout all the previous year. On their common blog they document the events day by day in photo, text and video. In the last year we have already presented in detail the processions following each other in this week, but they bring some novelty as well in each year. From the evocative lines of Úbeda’s great son Antonio Muñoz Molina in his novel Sefarad we can understand how much these celebrations mean to the town and to the whole Spain:

Nos gustaba volver con nuestros hijos pequeños y nos enorgullecía descubrir que se emocionaban con las mismas cosas que nos habían ilusionado en la infancia a nosotros. Querían que llegara la Semana Santa para ponerse sus trajes diminutos de penitentes, sus capuchones infantiles que les dejaban destapada la cara. Apenas nacían los inscribíamos como hermanos en la misma cofradía a la que nuestros padres nos habían apuntado a nosotros. Viajaban ansiosos en el coche, ya un poco más crecidos, preguntando nada más salir cuántas horas faltaban para la llegada. Habían nacido en Madrid y hablaban ya con un acento que no era el nuestro, pero nos daba orgullo pensar y decir que pertenecían a nuestra tierra tanto como nosotros mismos, y al llevarlos de la mano un domingo por la mañana por la calle Nueva igual que nos habían llevado a nosotros nuestros padres, al subirlos en brazos ante el paso de un trono para que vieran mejor al borriquillo que cabalga Jesús entrando a Jerusalén, o la cara verde y siniestra que tiene Judas en el paso de la Santa Cena, sentíamos consoladoramente que la vida estaba repitiéndose, que en nuestra ciudad el tiempo no pasaba o era menos cruel que el tiempo tan angustioso y trastornado de la vida en Madrid.

We were happy to return together with our small kids and we have discovered with pride that they were enchanted by the same things which had also enchanted us in our childhood. They could hardly wait the Holy Week to come, when they can put on their small penitent’s clothes and children’s hood which leave the face free. As soon as they were born we inscribed them into the same confraternity to which our fathers had inscribed us, too. They were not much older now, as they sat excited on the back seat of the car and kept asking us how many hours we need yet to get there. They were already born in Madrid and spoke in a dialect which is not ours, but we were proud to think and say that they also belonged to our land, just as much as ourselves. And when on Sunday morning we take them by the hand, as our parents had taken us, to walk out on the calle Nuova and to lift them up when a throne passes by so that they could better see the ass’s colt on which Jesus had entered Jerusalem or the green and sinister face of Judas at the Last Supper, we are consoled by the feeling that life repeats itself, that in this town of ours time does not pass by, or at least it is less cruel than the anxious and chaotic time of life in Madrid.

Pero también las otras ciudades españolas celebran la Semana Santa con procesiones diarias. Wang Wei nos ha enviado bonitas fotos de la procesión de lunes en Palma de Mallorca. «Es una procesión pequeña», escribe, «prácticamente de Santa Clara a San Francisco. Dan la vuelta justo a nuestra casa por la calle de Montesión y luego por la calle del Sol. Siguen casi el perímetro del antiguo ghetto (el call –judería– es precisamente el nombre de la calle que se ve en las primeras fotos). Al ser una procesión pequeña, sin ningún turista, es más impresionante. Se ve bien el fondo, las raíces católicas de un pequeño pueblo, replegado sobre sí mismo, como era Palma hace siglos, y no solo el espectáculo turístico en que se va convirtiendo poco a poco.»

But the other Spanish towns also celebrate the Holy Week with daily processions. Wang Wei has sent us nice photos on the Monday procession in Palma de Mallorca. “It is a small procession,” he writes, “actually only from the Santa Clara to the San Francisco. They pass exactly in front of our house, on calle de Montesión, on the border of the ancient ghetto (the name call – ghetto – indicates precisely the street that can be seen in the first photos). It is impressive exactly because it is so small, without any tourists. They display the origins and the Catholic roots of a small settlement closed in itself like Palma was centuries ago, and not just a touristic spectacle into which the city has been converted step by step.”

Desde el call la procesión entra en la calle de Montesión. Asomados a una ventana de la casa de Wang Wei seguimos el desfile hacia la iglesia de los jesuitas, construida prácticamente sobre la antigua sinagoga.

From the call the procession enters the calle de Montesión. From a window of Wang Wei’s house we watch it proceeding towards the Jesuit church which was practically developed from the old synagogue five hundred years ago.

Las grandes procesiones de Palma, claro está, son las del Jueves y Viernes Santo. La multitudinaria es la del Viernes; sin embargo, la mayor devoción es para la del Jueves, la del Crist de La Sang (Cristo de la Sangre). Este año, después de muchos en que no fue así, la imagen salió de la Iglesia del antiguo Hospital General, donde está siempre, y llegó hasta la Catedral.

However, the main processions of Palma obviously take place on Holy Thursday and Friday. The largest one is that of Friday, but the most devotional one is the Crist de La Sang (Christ of the Blood) on Thursday. In this year, after several years when it was organized differently, the image started from the Church of the old Hospital General where it is conserved, and arrived to the Cathedral.

En nuestro pueblo la fiesta no es tan suntuosa, pero en majestuosidad seguramente no queda detrás de las españolas.

In our village the feast is not so sumptuous, but in majesty it surely does not leg behind the Spanish ones.

Around harvest

On Sunday morning system administrator and olive planter Porrozillo walked out to the edge of Úbeda, and contemplated with satisfaction his plantation spreading in the Andalusian mar de olivos or sea of olives which promised an abundant harvest. He also took a photo and he sent it to our forum of El País readers.

In the spring we have already written about Úbeda – in whose Carmelitan monastery Saint John of the Cross died in 1591 – a propos of their never ending fiestas, especially of the celebrations of the Holy Week. This photo was made from the promenade named for the great son of the town, the prominent contemporary author Antonio Muñoz Molina, that is from somewhere here. If you cannot sleep, count the olive trees on the map.

On the plantations of Csömör the harvest is already over.

Andalusian Holy Week

On the El País web forum in which I also participate, this is already the second year that web guru and olive planter porrozillo has published the photos of the Holy Week processions in Úbeda. This year he only sent a short video, but it reminded me to publish here the photos of the previous year to demonstrate that there are places where they still do it properly.

The Andalusian Úbeda, on Unesco’s World Heritage list, is famous for its olive plantations and its Holy Week processions. These latter have been organized by the city’s eighteen religious confraternities active since the Middle Ages. The ceremonies start already at the beginning of Lent with posters, advertisements and publications, daily festive Stations of the Cross, pageants presenting the holy images and statues with the partecipation of thousands of persons, as well as public rehearsals of the bands on the main square. The common blog of the confraternities publishes illustrated daily reports on all that. By the way, the series of Lenten and Holy Week feasts is only the biggest among the ten similarly generous feasts organized throughout the year by the confraternities, and in addition there are also yearly four flamenco and old music festivals in the city. After all, one has to fill out with something the dead time between the pruning of the olives and the harvest.

The Holy Week ceremonies start on Palm Sunday with the entrance of Christ in Jerusalem. This is organized by the Borriquillo (Ass’s colt) confraternity from eleven in the morning until the fireworks of nine in the evening.


On Monday the confraternity of Our Lady brings forward with all solemnity the statue of the Virgin from the church of Santa María de los Reales Alcázares, so that she would also start her all week long way to the Golgota, accompanying the image of Jesus in every other procession.


On Tuesday night from ten o’clock celebrations of Tenebrae, and then a night procession with the Cross throughout all the city.


The Wednesday procession on the vigil of the Last Supper was washed out by a downpour, but the commemoration was nevertheless celebrated.



On Thursday morning, prayer on the Mount of Olives.


Then a series of processions follow throughout all the day, each celebrated by a different confraternity: that of the Column, of the Flagellation, and, already at the dawn of Friday, the Sentence.






On Friday, at sunrise starts the procession of the Road to the Calvary, organized by the Jesus Nazareno confraternity of the guild of the oil pressers since the 1400s. The commemoration of each of the three Falls under the Cross are taken over from them by other processions. At three o’clock in the afternoon starts the procession of the Death on the Cross.





After the procession of the Descent from the Cross, at seven o’clock in the evening starts that of the Vigil or of the Pietà. This is the largest one among all, organized with the participation of all confraternities, twenty processions with forty-nine images all in all.





Finally, the series of Holy Week commemorations is closed on Sunday morning with the High Mass and the procession of the Resurrection.


If you are curious of videos and more photos, have a look at the blog of the Úbeda confraternities, where you can also read the reportages on the Holy Week of this year.