Haunting truths

War images

Long before photography was invented in the beginning of the 19th century, Spanish painter and last of the Old Masters, Francisco Jose De Goya y Lucientes, known to the world simply as Goya (1776-1828), had anticipated modern photography through his etchings. A total of 82 of these aquatint etchings by the artist — celebrated as an anti-war romantic — are being shown for the first time in India in an exhibition, titled Goya — Los Desastres (The Disasters and War Photography), at the Spanish cultural agency, Instituto Cervantes, in New Delhi till end September.

The enthusiasm with which Goya took to lithography, invented by Aloys Senefelder (1771-1834) in 1796, that became popular in the main European cities from the first years of the 19th century, shows his openness to new techniques of expression. Due to this and his zest for progress and modernity, it will not be out of place to affirm that if he had lived a few years more and witnessed the popularity of photography in 1839, he would have been one of its advocates, like painters Coubert, Delacroix or Degas.

Also regarded as one of the early moderns, Goya spent his last years in Bordeaux in France — the same city where the exhibition will finally culminate after travelling around the world — because of his disillusionment with the Spanish monarchy. He was buried in this French city after his death in 1828 and it was nearly a century later that his remains were moved to Madrid.

It is well known that the collective research that led to the invention of photography had begun at the dawn of the 19th century, and it had made great progress at the time of his death, but in spite of the 11 years between the year of his death and the commercialisation of the daguerreotype (a photographic process) in 1839, his series of etchings, as shown in Los Desastres, can be said to have a premonitory photographic vision.

Says Juan Bordes, curator of the show: “The testimonial intention and critique that Goya employs in Los Desastres can also be identified with the techniques of photography that sought impartial and objective evidence in order to denounce the cruelty of both sides.

He indicated that although images might be recreated, they spring from credible stories and the vicissitudes of war that he personally lived through: like the hunger and misery in the Madrid of 1811. These two sources of anecdotes and life experiences were conceptually transcribed by his imagination to become icons and through each one he managed to convey his denunciation of war that transcended his own time.”

The exhibition reveals Goya’s expression of disdain for the savagery the Peninsular War (1808-1814) between France and Spain — or any other war for that matter — had unleashed. During this period, Goya had also painted some of his anti-war famous statements on canvas like ‘The Charge of the Mamluks’ and ‘The Third of May, 1808’. So powerful is his imagery that Goya is supposed to have later become a model for the
work of a whole generation of artists including Edouard Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon.

Goya’s etchings are reminders of the fact that the spectre of war remains with us. They do not debate who is right or wrong but give expression to the miserable consequences of war, and hence are supposed to have influenced the war photographers of a later generation as well. His prints, of unrestricted severity and sheer rawness, convey an underlying condemnation of the senselessness of war and its devastating consequences.

In this particular show, for instance, pictures taken by the famous war photographers of that time — Robert Capa, David Seymour, Hans Namuth, Agustí Centelles and Alfonso Sánchez — have been juxtaposed with Goya’s etchings to prove that nothing much has changed.

One can find shocking similarities between sufferings shown on his canvases and in the images shot by photographers in later centuries. A striking case is an etching showing a man tied to a pole in a sitting position, being executed for possessing a knife, while years later, an unnamed photographer took a similar picture during the Spanish Civil War.

These images, from the Civil War, have been sourced from the archives of the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (National Library of Madrid) and demonstrate the universal power of the images of Los Desastres.

The etchings, which have been thematically grouped, have been displayed against a black background with very dim lighting. With simple titles like ‘Esto Lo Vi’ (I saw this), or ‘Esto Sucedis’ (This happened), the works show just the bare truth of war. “Harsh lighting could have damaged the nearly 200-year-old prints,” says Bordes, “this show can be viewed as the first example of graphic journalism in world history.”

But, besides photographic strategies, his vision took recourse to plastic techniques that heralded the new aesthetic of photojournalism. His accusations were direct and devoid of demagogy, that is in the language of the instant camera, without complex compositions to mitigate the brutality of the message. The compositional solutions coincide with what would be the plastic creed of this specific genre of photography: the search for furtive, disarranged and unusual settings. Like the images of future graphic reporters, almost all the scenes etched by Goya contain black parasites or empty zones that centre one’s attention on the image areas which have the most significant information. For this reason, all the prints seem to be stolen images, as they make the spectator live through the risks and opportunities of the photographer. They help one to simulate being in close proximity to the event, at the opportune moment.

“The objective of this exhibition is to extend Goya’s denunciation of war to our times,” Bordes adds, “these images act as an indignant thumping of fists on his etching table and directly touch our conscience. The opinions expressed, full of intelligent doubts and ambivalent sentiments on these prints, are a condemnation of man-to-man conflicts. His vehemence is undoubtedly singular. Nevertheless, Goya put his genius at the service of a cause that found no echo in his own society.”

If anything has changed at all since then is a question we may need to ask ourselves.