Since its opening in October 2020, KBr has become a place of reference for all photography lovers. The exhibitions that, until now, have dedicated great names such as Paul Strand, Paolo Gasparini or Bleda and Rosa, the regularly scheduled training activities and the more than 1,200 works that make up its collection make this great Fundación MAPFRE cultural and exhibition center a ideal space to understand the history of photography and its evolution as an artistic medium.
KBr regularly organizes series of conferences, both on its exhibitions and on topics related to photography. Now, it presents this specific cycle in face-to-face and online format, which specifically addresses the symbiotic relationship that exists between photography and archive. As Joan Boadas, director of the Municipal Archive of Girona, explains in the introductory text of the cycle he directs, “the continuous act of photographing is inevitably followed by an accumulation of images that become, almost naturally, an archive”.
Already in the period from 1830 to 1860, more than four thousand daily daguerreotypes were made in the United States. Since then, the number of still images that humanity has generated has only grown. In August 2017, the Business Insider publication calculated that the total number of photographs that would be produced in that year in the world would reach 1.2 billion (about 3,287 million a day).
Faced with this incessant production, it is logical to ask ourselves which images we decide to keep and which ones end up in oblivion. In this regard, Boadas launches a series of interesting questions: Does the artist's will to transcend influence the intention to preserve the work he has done? Is it the cultural heritage value that bases the conservation strategies, or does the commercial exploitation of the works also intervene?
These and other interesting questions will be analyzed in the eight conferences that will be held from October to December (Tuesdays, at 7 pm) in KBr, in which an attempt will be made to understand the role of the archive in the creation of memory; and it will also investigate which photographs have disappeared or have never come into existence, as well as what role the possible self-interested destruction of the past has had in all of this.
In the section of the cycle dedicated to the birth of the archive, on October 11, Anne Cartier-Bresson, honorary curator of the General Patrimony in France and niece of the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, will speak in Traces, archives, images, of the reasons and the obstacles for the creation of archives, private and public, of professional photographers. The objective is to reflect on what should be preserved and for what public, to then define some methodological axes in carrying out this task.
Sergi Griño, founder of the Photographic Agency Album, will address, on October 18, the Evolution of the business model of an image bank. In his presentation, he will analyze the origin of this type of commercial files and their transformation to adapt to the technologies that have been emerging, as well as to the new needs of clients and the globalization of the market.
On October 25, in The capricious loop of memory, Dr. Miriam Díez Bosch, a specialist in communication and issues related to religion, will introduce us to what, paraphrasing Derrida, we can call “archive evil”, an obsession linked to the desire to order and record as an antidote to oblivion, and a way of responding to the need to know who we are or who the others have been.
The writer Lluís Muntada i Vendrell, for his part, will investigate, on November 8, in Before oblivion, the way in which archives resignify the present, creating and reworking memory.
In the section dedicated to The looks in the archive: Memory and creation, the writer Josep Maria Fonalleras will reflect, on November 15, on The use of the archive in literary creation, going through the links between works by authors such as W. G. Sebald, Peter Handke o Juan Rulfo and the use of a graphic support that deepens the meaning of the text.
On November 22, the professor of Art History María Luisa Bellido Gant, author of numerous books on museology, will propose, in Photographic archive and artistic creation: fragments for an itinerary, an analysis of the use of photography in the plastic arts, from specific cases.
Does the avalanche of digital photographs, "unreachable on a human scale, anticipate their disappearance"? Boadas wonders. What will the archive of the future be like, in a world marked by the crossroads of continuity or rupture with traditional analog concepts? These topics and others will be discussed in the last two conferences of the cycle, grouped under the title The Death of the Archive.
The prestigious photographer Joan Fontcuberta will invite us, on November 29, in From analogical Arcadia to the digital bazaar, to critically immerse ourselves in the archive, even to “squat” it, to see it as an ideal space for artistic creation to dare to hack history and establish new dialogues with reality.
Finally, on December 13, Bernardo Riego Amézaga, historian of images and their technologies, will take us on a journey "beyond algorithms", offering a humanistic vision of artificial intelligence in access to archives. In an era marked by the omnipresence of the Internet, the immersive experiences of the metaverse or the so-called “surveillance capitalism”, there is the possibility – as Riego Amézaga points out – of putting technologies at the service of human beings.
In total, there will be eight expert voices with polyhedral and complementary visions that will help us rethink the value of images and their classification to build our collective memory. Those interested in the cycle can download the program and register on the KBr website, where they will find more information about exhibitions and activities.
