#24/7 VALENCIA: CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THIS EXHIBITION?
MuVIM: “Rafael de Luis Casademunt, in his role as chronicler of a specific period of the city of Valencia, as Eugène Atget did in Paris in his day, allows us to recall a city with his unique and often timeless photogaphy… in its dual nature of art and document.
The artist offers us his personal vision of the city with those images whose meaning affected him and which he decided to capture. They are, of course, a historical document of an existing city, but they are not an exhaustive work of urban mapping.
The photographer offers us his eyes as he is responsible for the chosen subject matter, framing, characters and buildings. A certain nostalgia for a moment that he feels is fleeting and unrepeatable and whose aura of disappearance can be sensed, pervades his work.
Rafael de Luis takes photographs, as we all do, to remember, to fix what he has photographed and save it from precarious memory. Forty years younger and in a pre-democratic political situation full of expectations of freedom, amnesty and autonomy, his interests, his hopes, were conditioned by his youth and by the moment. But photography leaves us with the wrapping of the moment like the skin of a chrysalis, beautiful but dead, and Rafael de Luis, as is said of assassins, returns forty years later to the scene of the crime to reaffirm the facts.
We need memory in order not to forget, as simple as that. We need to remember in order not to repeat the same mistakes. We are what we remember. We cannot appreciate what we have, the quality of life we have lost or the city we live in without knowing what it was like. For all these reasons, photographs, as mirrors of memory – as François Arago defined daguerreotypes – participate in the verisimilitude of representation, they serve as portraits of the past in which to contrast our memories, so as not to fall into the total subjectivity of the word. Being able to confront the objectual “truth” of the past, that trace of light on the sensitive paper, allows us to refine our memory thanks to its descriptive precision.
The vision of these works will arouse memories for those who knew the València of forty years ago and hope that the evolution of our city, with the passing of the years, will remain ever more habitable, beautiful and human. May the beauty and charm of its streets continue to be, as it has always been, the extension of our homes, part of our living space where we do not feel like strangers. Our southern culture, thanks to the favourable climate and the light, invites us to go out, to wander, to find – as the artist does – pleasant surprises and unknown corners. To increase our love for this city.”
Report by ’24/7 Valencia’ team
Article copyright ’24/7 Valencia’
‘VALÈNCIA, 1980 + 40’
Photographs by Rafael de Luis Casademunt
Exhibition until March 20th
MuVIM
Guillem de Castro, 8
46001
València
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