cefvigo gallery

The photographer Virxilio Vieitez was born in Soutelo de Montes (Pontevedra) in 1930. when he was 18 he started to work as a mechanic in the Pyrinees where he bought his first camera, a Kodak format 6x9, to start taking pictures of the scenery and of his workmates. Later he moved to Catalonia, working as a photographer under Julio Pallí in Palamós. In 1955 he returned to Soutelo where he started business as a professional photographer managing to get hold of all the clients of Terra de Montes and working in different towns and villages such as Cerdedo, Avión, Beariz, Forcarei…

At the beginning of the 60s, when the identity card became compulsory, he travelled on his Lambreta through all the region making the portraits for the cards. He used just a white cloth as background, something that can be identified thanks to a tear which appears in most of the portraits. In spite of the brief time he dedicated to these portraits (just one or two pictures for each one), they have a great interest from the aesthetic as well as from the documentary point of view, because they ended up by becoming an exhaustive collective portrait of the region at that given time.

Although he continued to work until the 80s, this book is centered on the years 1955-65 as we consider this period the moment when he made his most interesting work. He photographed the different aspects of the life in the region, the country works, activities like the pig-killing, social events like the dances, football matches or the arrival of the jugglers.

Great part of his time was dedicated to the wedding photographs, and with this purpose he travelled to other villages. It must also be mentioned the work he made taking pictures of the funeral wakes and of the deceased, photographs which were very useful in inheritance matters, being the pictures the evidence of the death of the person involved. They also allow us to study more thoroughly the role that photography can play as an instrument that makes memory last.

Most of the works mentioned about life in the region were portraits, and it must be stressed that almost all of them were taken outdoors, with a very simple setting totally controlled by the photographer, something that makes them both exceptional and fascinating. The most original achievment of these portraits is the substitution of the traditional studio by vegetal backgrounds so attractive for him. Sometimes he even introduced vegatal foregrounds as essential elements of the photograph. It is absolutely unusual to see first holy communion portraits where the cabbages occupy a big part of the photo, and the subject of the picture is in the middle of them, in spite of the solemnity of the moment. Nalgunhas ocasións cómpre destacar a harmonía entre o fondo vexetal e o ramo de flores da moza fotografada. It should also be mentioned the harmony that sometimes appear between the vegetal background and the bouquet of flowers of the woman photographed. Quite outstanding are as well the pictures in which he introduces animals, and specially those where the background introduced are the huge cars, haigas, brought from America by the emigrants. This element makes photography clearly reflect the situation generated by emigration. A situation in which those luxurious American cars appeared on roads that were just paths, in places where the farmers lacked the most basic machines, and where the way of life lacked the most basic services.

It does not fail to seem surrealistic to see one of those haiga parked in front of a house where running water would not come until, at least, ten years later. In his portraits, characterised by the frontal and static attitude of the subject, our attention is drawn to the exceptional ability Virxilio has to capture a great expresiveness of the photographed people, always presented with an enormous dignity. This might make us think of Diana Arbus, Avedon or Paul Strand, photographers totally unknown to Virxilio.
The work of Virxilio Vieitez has been studied by the group of Photographic Investigation of Vigo University within the project "Two Aspects of Galician Photography. 1950-65" financed by Vigo University, a project in which the photographer's daughter, Keta Vieitez has collaborated.