The Art, Culture and Tourism Centers, through the MIAC-Castillo de San José, inaugurated the exhibition La isla sumergida (The submerged island) by Lanzarote photographer Javier Reyes (Haría, 1926) last Friday night. The exhibition brings together a significant number of works taken from among the thousands of negatives that the author kept and that can be enjoyed in their entirety for the first time in an extensive way. The work carried out by Reyes for more than two decades in Lanzarote is a collection of great documentary value that captures the portrait of an isolated rural population with the gaze of someone who participates in that reality.
Javier Reyes began his professional practice of photography at the age of 18 by chance, later preparing in a corner of his house in Haría - where he still resides - a modest studio with few technical resources, through which practically the entire population of the north of the island passed, which at that time had five thousand inhabitants. Between 1943 and 1972 Javier Reyes practiced portraiture in a self-taught way and photographed scenes of daily life through different events and social activities, parties, dances, meetings of friends, excursions by sea, religious ceremonies, illustrious visits or sports.
The images in this exhibition arise in a historical context of post-war period exacerbated by the external isolation suffered by Lanzarote, to which is added terrible transport conditions - until the 1960s only two weekly steamships operated that connected with Gran Canaria and the airport began to operate regularly - and non-existent telecommunications - the telephone arrived massively in the 70s.
La isla sumergida (The submerged island), curated by Mario Ferrer and Gerson Díaz, in addition to showing us the gaze of a creator who offers us a world of images of great beauty, also represents a work of historical documentation, initiated through the web portal www.memoriadelanzarote.com , of the Data Center of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, in whose team its curators, the historian and journalist Mario Ferrer and the photographer Gerson Díaz, are integrated.
The exhibition project La isla sumergida (The submerged island) has prepared an edition of postcards with texts by artists, journalists and writers from the island, and a catalog where the curator, Mario Ferrer, who has also taken care of digitizing this collection of negatives, writes: "As we progressed in the process of scanning and documentation, a place, a time and a way of life were being defined more precisely. (?) Until we finally realized that it was not simply a large collection of old photographs that we were rescuing, but an entire island".
The Art, Culture and Tourism Centers have the collaboration of the Data Center of the Cabildo de Lanzarote and the Environment, Hunting and Heritage Area for this project which, in the words of the councilor Astrid Pérez, means "recovering this important artistic heritage and sharing with our visitors this small great history of the island through the eyes of one of its most outstanding photographers".
During last night's inauguration, which was attended by a wide representation of Lanzarote society, the group Pentawoman performed, composed of Mariola and Beni Ferrer, Luisa Luzardo, Juana Bello and Lourdes Bermejo, all of them well-known voices of the island's artistic scene. The spirit of Pentawoman is to penetrate the receiver through the human voice in its purest state, direct communication without mediations, a legitimate claim when we are permanently besieged by the intermediation of the digital and technological era.
The exhibition will remain open until January 30, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the MIAC-Castillo de San José.
ACN