The cameras have zoom and Colita’s zoom (we will do it the other way around, the nickname first, and then we will say that we are talking about Isabel Steva Hernández) was a wide angle that had the virtue of not distorting reality. Was she the great photographer of the so-called Catalan gauche divine? Without a doubt. But she was much more and the focus would be blurred if we only focused on that.
Colita was the woman who got her feet muddy in the Somorrostro and immortalized the gypsy life and the vital flamenco that existed there; She was the woman who dressed as a Falangist so she could photograph Franco’s tomb; She was the woman who scandalized the Franco regime with her photos of nuns enjoying sex or demonstrations against the dictator’s dirty regime; She was the woman who had to make her way in a man’s world, sexist to the gonads, and in a profession in which in some newsrooms there was not even a toilet for “Ladies”; She was the woman who used her camera to claim the place that women deserve in the world. And she was the woman. In the sense that we would not be wrong if we said that she was the pioneer, the feminine and feminist reference, when the great photographers were all men. She did everything with arrests and with a sense of humor, sometimes corrosive: “You had to throw balls at her,” she said in an interview. She died on the last day of 2023, at 83 years of age, due to peritonitis that no longer gave her any more reel with which to extend her life. She leaves all photojournalists in the profession orphaned.
Daughter of the municipal engineer Manuel Steva and Isabel Hernández, she sometimes recalled: “I was orphaned at a very young age and I had to build a family, which I chose; It is a family full of friends.” And it was like that; Many of the famous people she photographed ended up being her friends. It happened with Carmen Amaya – “it was a beautiful animal, like a panther (…) that lived in a beautifully wild way” -, to whom he sold his first professional photograph, taken with a second-hand Pentax, which had a 50mm lens. . And she also spent time with Terenci Moix, with whom she shared many vital moments.
His ability to empathize, convince or entangle those photographed is behind some of the best-known photos, such as that of Gabriel García Márquez, with his book “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on his head, as a hat, or that of the almighty totem of the publishing world Jorge Herralde, with “his secretaries” (who were not), Coral Majó and Anna Bohigas, at his feet and showing their panties, in a completely sexist and scandalous painting at the time (1970) that only Colita could have done and that today, in times of cancellation, would also raise blisters.
Colita was a photographer of portraits, poses and very studied situations of famous people such as Rafael Alberti, Ana María Matute, Carmen Amaya, Antonio Gades, Joan Manuel Serrat, Bella Dorita, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró , Orson Welles, the Terenci brothers and Ana María Moix, Maria Aurèlia Capmany… But he also shone in his snapshots of everyday life and, above all, those in which people are not paying attention to the camera. She was a photographer at the time of the transition and the anti-Franco struggles.
La gauche divine, movement of intellectuals and artists of the left in Catalonia (the list is very long, but they serve as examples Félix de Azúa, José María Carandell, Ana Maria Moix, Terenci Moix, Guillermina Motta, Raimon, Serrat, Jorge Herralde, Esther Tusquets, Gonzalo Suárez, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Roman Gubern, Rosa Regàs, Ricardo Bofill, Oriol Bohigasc, Teresa Gimpera…), he must immortalize them through his gaze.
“Photography is an act of faith,” this woman once said, who learned from Oriol Maspons, Leopoldo Pomés, Xavier Miserachs, whose assistant she was, and also from Francesc Català-Roca, whom she admired. She became the great photographer of flamenco art and Antonio Gades, Vicento Escudero, Paco de Lucía, Carmen Amaya, Cristina Hoyos passed through her camera… Her passion for flamenco began when she was commissioned to take photographs during the filming of Romeo y Julieta gitano : the film Los Tarantos, directed by Francisco Rovira-Veleta. During a break from filming, Amaya started an improvised dance. “I was absolutely fascinated. I believe that that day I discovered what art was; art, for me, is emotion. And then I fell in love, not only with Carmen, but with flamenco.” But she also followed with her camera the protesting and musical sounds of Nova Cançó and Raimon, Serrat, Llach, Guillermina Motta and many others, on stage, in their private lives or in photographic sessions, were captured by the art of Tail.
He worked for publications such as Boccaccio, Primera Plana, Mundo Diario, Interviú, Destino or Fotogramas, among others. He published around fifty books with his photographs and organized around forty exhibitions. In her extensive professional career she was recognized with a multitude of awards, from the Creu de Sant Jordi of the Generalitat, which Pasqual Maragall gave her, to the honorary doctorate from the UAB or the Office of Journalist 2023 of the Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya, and being an Honorary Ramblist: “Barcelona is my mother. “I would not have taken the photos that I have taken throughout my life, if I had not been from Barcelona.”
But the award that excited him the most and that he believed he deserved the most was the one that he rejected, along with the 30,000 euro prize: the National Photography Award (2017), which José Ignacio Wert, then Minister of Culture of the PP: “It is unfortunate, depressing, to have to say no to the most important award of your life,” he admitted. But in his rejection note he did not spare criticism for the cultural policy of Mariano Rajoy’s Government.
Teresa Sesé recalled that moment in a chronicle: “’Of course the 30,000 euros would have been great for me,” says the photographer, whose financial situation is not exactly one to get excited about. Her gesture, in this sense, is doubly revolutionary. “But what do you want me to do if I have been raised like this?” She replies, and jokes: “Dad, thank you for raising me like this, but let’s see if you can send me money somewhere else! …”. Colita said goodbye to the minister with these words in her rejection letter: “At the moment, Mr. Wert, I don’t feel like being in the photo with you.”
On Sunday afternoon, Colita closed the shutter forever.
