Photojournalism and democracy. Memory processes of the Spanish Transition

Abstract

The years of the Franco dictatorship were dominated by a cultural context where the ideologic dissidence with the regime was chased. The photography of these years translated this political situation into pictorialist images, overblown and not reflective about the precarious reality of the moment. This trend would gradually fade away until the last years of Franco. In the 70s, the renewal impulses of a group of photographers and the growing independence of the press contributed to the consolidation of a new type of journalism that felt the responsibility of recording the social change that was developing. To this aim, the press found its greatest ally in the techniques of photojournalism. The book reviewed here, Imágenes en tránsito. Fotoperiodismo y Transición española (1975-1982), edited by the researchers Rebeca Romero Escrivá and Lorna Arroyo, analyzes and evaluates the impact generated by press photography in the collective construction of the graphic memory of the Spanish Transition. Through a multidisciplinary perspective, which explores both the macro and the microhistorical, the monograph aims to highlight the photojournalism of the Transition as an artistic creation and point out the processes of resignification that have affected the images since the moment of their original publication.