I go out to play in the street and the photos look for me.” The veteran photojournalist Montse Santamaria explains it, with the soul of a girl, dark eyes, green hair and at her 86 years – which she doesn’t look like -. Born in Terrassa in the middle of the Civil War, Santamaria entered the world of photography – in a hostile era for communication professionals – thanks to what her husband and father of her children, Ramon Masats (1931) did. , great graphic reference and contemporary with Oriol Maspons or Xavier Miserachs. She explains that the images come to her easily, on a very special evening, surrounded by a dozen professional colleagues, active photographers, who went on a guided tour of a tribute exhibition on Friday.
The Emotions exhibition, curated by photojournalist Cristóbal Castro, can be visited in the Muncunill room in Terrassa until February 25. 60 black and white and color images have been selected. Some are from his time at Cambio 16, others from his travels in Spain (photos of the Pride, the guts of a gypsy wedding…) and abroad. Before, with her camera and, now, with a simple mobile phone, but with good optics, she obtains images with “a double and triple reading, with a feminine and detailed look”, as assessed by Ana Jiménez, author of this photo chronic Castro defines it as follows: “Montse Santamaria, when he looks, captures the emotions and the vibration, feelings that represent two essential values: the background beat of life and the echo of a reality that resonates within his person”.
Santamaria, who does not consider herself an “artist, but a photographer”, admits that she never sought fame, but to work on what made her happy. “I was in the shadows for a long time, because of the time it was, when we women barely had space, and because I focused on raising my three children. But I don’t regret anything. I have been happy as a mother”, she says.
I miss what was special about analog photography. Masats taught him to reveal in the toilet of his house. “I revealed a lot of his work and with that work I learned that, apart from knowing how to focus, look for the best composition, the process of revealing – aside from the technical aspects – was pure magic because you didn’t know, until the last moment , if you had the photo”. In addition to her ex-husband, she had two other references: Gabriel Cualladó and Paco Gómez. The four of them went out on Sundays in Madrid, where he moved to live in 1960, to take pictures. “I got curious and started with a Pentax”, he remembers.
“Now it keeps happening to me, that I treat it like a game and without doing almost anything, the photos come to me”. From a graffiti in which a gentleman is seen sticking his head out of the wall looking to the right, while crossing a boy looking to the left, or a customer in a restaurant wearing a T-shirt with a drawing on the back that it’s another back, naked and embraced, or a young man showing his name tattooed on his tongue… Everyday scenes that inspire her.
Santamaria, a rabidly modern woman, has had many peculiar experiences. In 1963, the Argentine artist Alberto Greco came to a town in Madrid, Piedralaves, to turn it into a performative action called “Gran Rollo Manifesto del Arte Vivo Dito”. With 200 meters of paper, Greco wrapped the town with his work. The photographer, who met him by chance while spending the summer there, made a photographic report of the artistic action. Years later, his photos became coveted collector’s items.
In 1975 he became part of the photography department of Cambio 16, especially in the laboratory, until 1993. In 1985 he participated in the traveling exhibition of World Fotopress. In 1988 he received the special prize in the Children in Focus competition. Later, he participated in the tribute to Alberto Greco at the IVAM. Among his exhibitions are Photojournalism in freedom, Madrid and Portugal; Light and time for women, Madrid; and Women, at the Art and Technology Foundation, Madrid.
Santamaria regrets some “clearly sexist” moment, such as when he took a photograph of the then mayor Álvarez del Manzano, surrounded by women with certain body postures, “when there were rumors about his sexual orientation”, he recalls. “What happened is that the photo was good, timely, very current, it allowed for various readings and was different from what was being done, but the head of photography discarded it and preferred the one of a colleague, which was totally anodyne.” Those were other times, or not. “We have made a lot of progress with women’s rights, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We lack visibility”, he encourages his professional colleagues. And he’s right: there are only 10% of photographers in the media, currently; a really low figure compared to other professions. It will be necessary to confirm it.
