Third ArchivoyMemoria Conference
Account
The Third "ArchivoyMemoria" Conference, organised by the
Archivo Histórico Ferroviario (AHF, Railway History Archive) of
the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles and the CSIC’s
Group for Anthropological Research on Heritage and Popular
Cultures (Grupo de Investigación Antropológica sobre Patrimonio
y Culturas Populares), was held on 13 and 14 February 2008 at
the Palacio de Fernán Núñez, the headquarters of the Fundación
de los Ferrocarriles Españoles (FFE).
The initial aim of this activity was to contextualize “The Grief
Archive”, a research project about the numerous tributes and
expressions of grief collected at various railway stations
following the bombings in Madrid on 11 March 2004. However, the
extent of response, acceptance and participation made it
necessary to consolidate this Conference by creating a
multidisciplinary forum for the analysis and exchange of
experiences, whose aim is to forge links with historical
research and bring together historians, anthropologists,
archivists, communication media experts, librarians, literature
specialists, museologists and exponents of various disciplines,
in order to create a favourable atmosphere for dialogue between
research projects and documentation and archive professionals.
At the same time, these conferences attempt to explore the role
of archives in the social construction of memory, by connecting
and establishing links in a theoretical and practical context.
Thus, on this occasion, besides the usual speeches and round
table discussions, the Conference also included the presentation
of papers, which covered research activities and projects
relating to the general theme of this third "ArchivoyMemoria"
conference: “Images of memory: methodology, interpretation and
management of audiovisual sources”.
The Director-General of the FFE, Carlos Zapatero Ponte, and the
Director of the CSIC’s Humanities and Social Sciences Centre,
Eduardo Manzano Moreno, opened the Conference by welcoming all
the attendees, of whom there were more than 150. The activity
schedule was divided into four speeches, in connection with
which five intense paper presentations sessions were
established, focusing on authorship, rights and ethical and
social issues concerning the uses of images, the conservation
and management of images, and the latest social research
possibilities in relation to audiovisual sources. Finally, a
concluding discussion served to assess and summarise the
activities carried out.
Following the structure of the schedule, the first speech was
given by the American William Christian, who reflected on
photography from an anthropological perspective by showing
examples of images of miraculous apparitions in Exkioga
(Guipúzcoa) and of a family from Wisconsin. The second speech
was given by the photography curator and restorer, Ángel
Fuentes, who dazzled the public with his extensive knowledge,
experience and sense of humour as he traced the historical
evolution of photographic procedures and raised awareness of the
causes of the loss and deterioration of this material.
The chairman Domingo Cuéllar, Head of Documental Heritage at the
FFE, proceeded to introduce the First Session “Metodología,
gestión y uso de imágenes”, (“Methodology, management and use of
images”), the first speech being given by the Deputy Director of
the Archivo Histórico Nacional (National Historical Archive),
José Luis Latorre Merino, who analysed the legal aspects
surrounding the use of these materials, such as copyright,
reproduction and distribution rights, public communication, etc.
The lawyer Javier de la Cueva addressed similar issues during
his discussion of Copyleft and its conditions of free and
universal access to images, and how it enables authors to allow
their works to circulate through the networks. In relation to
cinematography, the representative of the Filmoteca Española
(Spanish Film Library), María García Barquero, focused on
management policy, forms of access to the cinematographic
heritage, its functions and the limits of copyright. The morning
session was brought to a close by the General Secretary of the
Asociación Española de Cine e Imagen Científicos (ASECIC,
Spanish Association of Scientific Film and Image), Rogelio
Sánchez Verdasco, who explained the important task of the
“Divulgación y difusión de audiovisuales científicos”.
(“Disclosure and dissemination of scientific audiovisuals”).
The Conference resumed in the afternoon with university lecturer
Juan Miguel Sánchez Vigil’s paper entitled “El Documento
Fotográfico: historia, usos y aplicaciones” (“The Photographic
Document: history, uses and applications”), an important
dissertation about the history of photography, both from a
technical point of view and with regard to its documental and/or
artistic content. The paper analysed the public and private uses
of photography according to its purpose, either personal
(memory, possession of a past, etc.) or general (dissemination,
information, communication, etc.), as well as the applications
resulting from use, e.g. models that allow the text to be
associated with the image.
Carmen Ortiz, a researcher at the CSIC, chaired the Second
Session on “Las fuentes audiovisuales en archivos, museos y
bibliotecas” (“Audiovisual sources in archives, museums and
libraries”). The railway was the common denominator of the three
papers presented during this session. Firstly, the historians
and archivists of the Archivo Histórico Ferroviario, Francisco
Cuadros, Domingo Cuéllar, Raquel Letón, Silvia Martín and
Leticia Martínez, presented their paper on “Fotografía y
ferrocarril: una reflexión en torno a las fuentes gráficas del
ferrocarril, su conservación y su estudio” (“Photography and the
railway: a reflection on the graphic sources of the railway,
their conservation and their study”). Then the restorers from
the FFE’s Madrid Railway Museum, Mª Concepción García González
and Inmaculada García Lozano, presented the “Fototeca del Museo
del Ferrocarril: un modelo de acopio, conservación y gestión
documental” (“Railway Museum Photo Library: a document
procurement, conservation and management model”), and finally,
Ana Cabanes and Raúl González from the FFE’s Railway Library
projected a video montage to symbolise their paper on “Imágenes
a todo tren: la memoria audiovisual de RENFE” (“On the right
track: the audiovisual memory of RENFE”).
The other papers presented during this session covered a wide
range of topics and were all very interesting and
thought-provoking. For example, Andrés Besolí from the
Universidad de Barcelona focused on the importance that
audiovisual and multimedia language has acquired in history
museums, and he challenged the world of museography to adopt new
display and communication solutions that guarantee an optimal
exploitation of the audiovisual message. Archivist Sonia Crespo
presented “Una experiencia archivística de fomento de la
identidad cultural a través de imágenes de la memoria en la
sierra de Madrid” (“An archive experience to promote cultural
identity through images of memory in the Madrid sierra”), a
project that enabled members of the general public to actively
participate in recovering the memory and identity of Collado
Mediano, a village in the north-west of the Madrid region. From
the Iberdrola Historical Archive and Film Library, Juan Carlos
García Adán and César Pérez de Díez’s “Professional and amateur
photography in the electricity industry: Otto Wunderlich versus
company employees” highlighted the work of early 20th century
professional photographer Otto Wunderlich, who produced a series
of photos of the installations of Hidroeléctrica Ibérica and
Hidroeléctrica Española.
The work carried out by the CSIC research team in relation to
the “Grief Archive” project was defended by Pilar Martínez Olmo,
Director of the CSIC’s Tomás Navarro Tomás Library. She
explained the two main objectives of the project: on the one
hand, to contribute to the memory of the 11-M bombings by
collecting and incorporating the wide range of tributes through
which the public expressed its grief in the wake of the tragic
events, and, on the other, to study these materials in the
context of the anthropology of violence and analyse the public
space and group expressions, grief rituals and popular religion.
The first speaker on the second day of the conference was Ana
Duplá, the Regional Government of Madrid’s Deputy
Director-General for Archives, who, with the collaboration of
Berta Bravo and Nieves Sobrino, outlined the Regional
Government’s experience with the two photography collections
that are kept in its Regional Archive: that of Martín Santos
Yubero and that of Cristóbal Portillo, both essential reference
points for a graphic insight into the history of Madrid in the
20th century.
The Conference continued with Session 3, concerning
“Conservación y restauración de imágenes” (“Conservation and
restoration of images”), chaired by Raquel Letón, Head of the
Archivo Histórico Ferroviario. This session produced two
extraordinary testimonies, the first of which was provided by
the renowned professor, Félix del Valle Gastaminza of
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, who gave a highly-praised
talk about research into the various contexts of photography:
authorship, technical, historical, economic and commercial,
social and cultural, artistic and aesthetic, as well as other
subsequent contexts related to the life of photography, such as
the contexts of exhibition, publication and reutilization.
Reyes Utrera, the photograph restorer at the General Archive of
the Royal Palace in Madrid, then proceeded to give a lengthy and
detailed description of “La Real Colección de Fotografía” (“The
Royal Photograph Collection”), offering the attendees an insight
into the important photograph collections kept by Patrimonio
Nacional (National Heritage), especially the Kaulak Archive
containing portraits of the Royal Family, the important
collection of Royal Family albums and postcards, and “Reales
Sitios”, the National Heritage magazine devoted to Royal Places.
Under the heading “Otras fuentes visuales” (“Other Visual
Sources”), the three papers presented in the Fourth Session
dealt with images from the pictorial perspective. As chairwoman,
CSIC’s Cristina Sánchez-Carretero briefly outlined the subject
of the first paper, “Imágenes que explican poesía: para una
interpretación de los dibujos de Federico García Lorca” (“Images
that explain poetry: for an interpretation of Federico García
Lorca’s drawings”), whose author, José Luis Plaza Chillón, was
unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances. A similar line
of argument ran through the other two papers, both of which
dealt with the work of the artist José Domínguez López. His
daughter, Montserrat Domínguez, presented “El archivo del
artista José Domínguez López: aproximación al estudio de las
tipologías documentales” (“The archive of the artist José
Domínguez López: an approach to the study of document types”),
and university lecturer Susana Ramírez addressed the same
subject from the documental perspective with “Fuentes para el
estudio de la industria farmacéutica: los diseños del artista
José Domínguez López” (“Sources for studying the pharmaceutical
industry: the designs of the artist José Domínguez López”).
The final session of the Conference, devoted to “Memoria,
Identidad y Fuentes Audiovisuales”. (“Memory, Identity and
Audiovisual Sources”), began with the project presented by the
CSIC researchers Carmen Ortiz y Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, who,
together with a group of archaeologists, anthropologists and
historians, offered an audiovisual presentation of images of
Carabanchel prison in south-west Madrid, on the basis of which
they have analysed the symbolic significance of this
penitentiary centre for different social partners: inmates,
residents’ associations, graffiti artists, etc.
Two papers were based on research into orality and repression,
both of them sharing the region of Galicia as a backdrop. The
first one relates to the project “As vítimas, os nomes, as voces
e os lugares” (“Victims, names, voices and places”), a joint
initiative of the three Galician universities with the backing
of the Regional Government of Galicia’s Ministry of Culture for
research on the memory and history of the Spanish Civil War in
the Galician sphere. Its coordinator, Xurxo Pantaleón, explained
the different phases of the project, including the creation of a
database of reprisal victims, the collection of oral sources,
the graphic heritage and the documents relating to sites of
memory. The second paper, presented by Esmeralda Broullón of the
Universidad de Cádiz, dealt with her line of research into
orality and immigration, which aims to recover the memory of
people of Galician origin who live in Cádiz. Her study of oral
and archive sources is completed with photographic sources, both
private (albums) and public (which are kept in the Municipal
Historical Archive of Cádiz and in the Pontevedra Museum).
The last three papers added an international dimension to the
conferences. CSIC researcher Paloma Díaz-Mas presented her
project in progress: "Los sefardíes ante sí mismos y en sus
relaciones con España: identidad y mentalidades en textos
judeoespañoles de Turquía y los Balcanes entre 1880 y 1933"
("The Sephardic Jews in relation to one another and in their
relations with Spain: identity and mentalities in Jewish-Spanish
texts from Turkey and the Balkans between 1880 and 1933"). At
this Conference she focused on the photographs included in the
study, which have been used to analyse certain aspects relating
to the external perception and self-perception of Sephardic
identity.
Finally, it is worth highlighting the two extraordinary papers
that reflected on the recent past of Argentina. The first,
presented by Lorena Verzero of the Universidad de Buenos Aires,
analyses the uses of news footage, photographs, home videos,
films, etc. and the ways in which present and future identities
are constructed, with special attention being paid to the sites
of memory, commemoration and preservation, to imbue them with
diverse meanings and different added values that determine
ethical and political standpoints. From the Universidad Nacional
de Córdoba (Argentina), Silvia Romano presented her paper on
audiovisual documents and human rights in Argentina. Drawing on
the audiovisual records of the Canal 10 news archive in Córdoba,
her research considers the connection between the preservation
of the audiovisual heritage and historical knowledge of the
violation of human rights, analysing the problems relating to
the conservation, preservation and accessibility of the images.
The Conference ended with a concluding discussion chaired by the
director of the FFE’s Documentation and Railway History Archive
Department, Miguel Muñoz Rubio, who did an excellent job of
summarising and reflecting on all the topics and issues dealt
with during the course of this highly productive two-day
conference.
Finally, we must not finish this account without mentioning the
next conference, which is already being prepared. The Fourth
"ArchivoyMemoria" Conference is due to take place in February
2009 and its main theme will be “Archivos y conflictos”
(“Archives and Conflicts”). All the information about this
conference and the previous ones will be available through this
web page.
Raquel Letón Ruiz
Archivo Histórico Ferroviario
Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles