Consuelo Kanaga had no rules. And that, added to her talent and prolific work, made her an extraordinary photographer. Kanaga’s images have a surprising timelessness and capture the soul of their protagonists, many of them affected by social marginalization, poverty and prevailing racial harassment. Kanaga was a pioneer who, while developing her career at the beginning of the 20th century, paved the way for future photographers. However, her professional career received less attention than that of other artists, especially outside the United States. Until 2024.
The KBr Photography Center of Fundación MAPFRE hosts the photographer’s first exhibition in Europe until May 12. Organized from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum—an institution that currently preserves much of its legacy—and in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the retrospective shows the public nearly 180 photographs, some of them iconic, and various material archival documentary. Consuelo Kanaga. Catching the Spirit runs through and contextualizes Kanaga’s work, very dedicated to women and the African-American population on which she helped build her identity.
Born in 1894 in Astoria, in the state of Oregon, she dedicated much of her production to women and the African-American population. The daughter of a lawyer and a writer, she helped her parents from a very young age with writing and editing tasks, which surely made her opt for journalism.
In 1915, at just twenty-one years old, Consuelo Kanaga began writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she learned photography and would be hired as a staff photographer. She would also work for the Daily News, another San Francisco newspaper. In the words of her friend, photographer Dorothea Lange, she was “the first press photographer she had ever met. She was a person very ahead of her time.”
He met Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange at the California Camera Club, and became interested in fine art photography through Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work magazine. Between 1927 and 1928 she traveled through Europe and North Africa. Throughout her adult years she lived between San Francisco and New York, participating in the circles of Grupo f/64 and Photo Leage. She took photographs during the labor struggles that spread along the west coast and maintained different studios dedicated to portraiture. Kanaga, who remained more in the shadows than other artists, was able to see her work exhibited at MoMA in the 1950s.
Kanaga was always interested in individuals above all else. People who in their daily lives suffered the consequences of harsh working conditions and prevailing poverty, issues that especially affected the black population of the United States. In fact, the artist is considered one of the clearest exponents of the New Black movement, which emerged in Harlem, New York, between 1920 and 1930.
This cultural trend, with strong social implications, not only made black artists flourish, but, through culture, called for white people, like Kanaga herself, to also unite in defense of freedoms, rights and the equality of African Americans. Hands (1930), in which a black hand and a white hand come together, clearly exemplifies his anti-racist ideas.
The Kanaga anthology that can be visited at the iconic Fundación MAPFRE center in Barcelona offers us, along with her particular vision of American scenes, the artist’s taste for cultivating portraiture, experimenting with poses, light, times and the frames. Not only ordinary people, anonymous people or members of the labor movement from the United States and other countries passed through her goal. During the 1930s and 1940s, Kanaga received artists in her studio or responded to the call of Alfred Stieglitz, W. Eugene Smith, Milton Avery, Mark Rothko or the designer Wharton Esherick.
Kanaga’s career is intertwined with a wide circle of women photographers with whom she had a special relationship. She was a great support and confidant to Imogen Cunningham, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Dorothea Lange, Alma Lavenson, Tina Modotti and Eiko Yamazawa, among many others, to whom she provided advice, companionship and connections in the art world. These women were a source of inspiration for Kanaga, just as she was for these artists. Little given to self-promotion, Kanaga was always more interested in strengthening emotional ties with those she valued.
In reality, gender inequalities and social conventions limited Kanaga’s ability to fully dedicate herself to artistic work. She worked full-time jobs, which only left room for her art during the weekends, and she repeatedly sidelined her career for her male partners—she was married up to three times. Kanaga died in her rural home, north of New York, in 1978. Almost fifty years later, her magnificent work, key to the history of modern photography, will be rightly vindicated beyond the United States.