cefvigo gallery

The second half of the 50s and the first of the 60s are a golden age for photographic competitions and associations. This gave rise to a number of pholographers who, from the present-day point of view are very interesting, not only for their documentary value but also because they defined their own aesthetic. One of the most significant, without any doubt, is Luis Rueda who founded with Valentín Roldán, César Quijada, Belló, Vega and Vivancos the "Agrupación Fotográfica Lucense de Educación y Descanso", of which he was an active member.

Luis Rueda was born in Havana in 1921. When he was 5 his family came back to Monforte where he lived until he went to Lugo to become a teacher. In 1941 he began to teach and to make photographs. His first photographs were made in order to keep memories and his favourite topics were landscapes, the work in the country, the markets... Later, and because of his job as a teacher and Physical Education monitor his work will be focused basically on children and specially on their games. "I was interested in grasping the children's expressions. Each one has his own characteristics. I studied the child...". Between 1955 and 1972 is when he is most active and carries out his most interesting work. He is constantly making photographs carrying, as his friends still remember, his Rollei or his Iko-Flex (his favourite because it gave the strongest definition of the image). he even carried the camera to the classroom in case something interesting happened during the break". The copies were made, as it was usual at he time, on 30 X 40 papers which made him cut part of the negative and allowed him "to eliminate the parts that were not essential, the mass that distracts the look and does not let you look in the right direction".

All the photographers of the photographic associations paid great attention to the laboratory where they spent a lot of time as well as exchanging information on different techniques with other photographers. However Rueda didn't even have his own laboratory so his copies were made by Vivancos, the first president of the association who settled as a professional photographer under the name of Juanjosé. At that time Rueda had to pay 10 pts. for the developing of a roll and 12 small copies. Before making the copies he discussed the cuttings thoroughly with Vivancos and César Quijada. Most of the photographs were made, as all the amateur photographers did, to be sent to the competitions, which, according to his opinion, were an encouragement.

The most popular competition at the time was an internal one called "the photo of the week" where the winning photograph was shown in the Praza de España. Some of those competitions required the negative and that's why he has lost some of the ones he was most interested in. The members of that association of Lugo didn't have a relationship with the other associations as deep as the associations of Vigo and Coruña had. Nevertheless Rueda knew the photographs by Veiga Roel and he has a good opinion of his landscapes but not so good of the photographs of people because they seemed to him too prepared. Although Rueda says that he's interested in spontaneity, some of his photographs of children suggest also a certain preparation. Rueda's photographies are formally more daring than those of the other members of the associations. He uses high downward angle, low upward angle and diagonal composition, some resources Novavision had introduced decades earlier.

The world of the children of the 50s, as the photographs show, was completely different from their present world, not only because of the different fashion or haircuts they wore, but also for their games. Those were times when the consumer society was quite different, when the children had to make their own toys, like the children of the photograph making a whistle out of alder wood.

When we watch these photographs today, with things that remind us of our past, they encourage our memory, restore that "Iost time" cancelled by the distance and the fast changes of our society. Before this evidence the best we can do is, as Barthes said, "close our eyes and let the details we see in them raise our affective conscience".