Photography in Spain in the Nineteenth Century

This catalogue and its concurrent exhibition marks the first time that a notable corpus of early photography from Spain has been gathered and offered outside of that country as the exclusive theme of a show. In the late spring and early summer of 1982, the Office of Fine Arts, Archives, and Libraries, a branch of Spain’s Ministry of Culture, organized for the first time in that country’s history an exhibition of Spanish photography sponsored by the national government. It took place in the Royal Salons of the National Library, in Madrid. Although early 1982 was a moment of great enthusiasm in Spain for its own photohistory, and several exhibitions were organized in this field, never has a significant group of photographs dealing with Spain been assembled for an international public.—from the foreword