“When photography was invented, nobody imagined how difficult its future would be as far as schemes and definitions were concerned. However, its destiny had already been dotted with contributions not only in the field of technology (the most foreseeable factor), but also in its enjoyment, language and value. The very nature of photography implies a certain amount of ambiguity, which makes it difficult to place an image in a specific context. A photograph can be taken for a very specific reason and then acquire new connotations.
One excellent example of the capacity for metamorphosis in the DNA of photography is the work by Virxilio Vieitez. A photographer who knew, or rather felt, that he was the best in his trade, but did not consider himself as an author and even less so imagined that, 50 years later, his production would have been recognised thanks to its ‘authorial’ and artistic value, which has placed it in a category populated by a wide variety of genres and abilities.
Virxilio Vieitez always took his photographs as the result of a commission, travelling far and wide across Terra de Montes to photograph his customers in their homes. His work contains all the characteristics of the country photographer who recorded the events and moments of the local families’ lives (from christenings to weddings, first communions and funerals); however, unlike others, he had a special talent for giving his portraits an air of solemnity. His style was unmistakable. He had extraordinary intuition and a capacity for the staging of the photograph, in which he included objects and suggestive poses that were almost surreal but which, in spite of themselves, then became fragments of truth closely bound to the environment.
His role as a town photographer in his day (from the end of the 1950s to the 1970s) was a very prestigious position and suited the character of someone as special as Vieitez: intelligent, quick, competent, instinctive and aware of his skills. He gave his models orders in a firm way that left no room for discussion and with a clarity that guaranteed the result. ‘I studied the situation and, when I squeezed the trigger, I knew my shot was on target.’ Virxilio Vieitez never wasted a shot; he was a more than reliable professional, a guarantee for his fellow citizens in the province of Pontevedra.
From the early studio portraits (in keeping with the traditions of the time) to those he set outdoors, which were his favourites; from photographs of ceremonies to small identity card photographs, as well as the portraits taken to be sent to many relatives who had emigrated: today, his images constitute an excellent ethnographical testimony that has become the memory of a people and an era.
The Virxilio Vieitez archive is an important part of our cultural heritage and is maintained in Soutelo de Montes (Pontevedra), the town in which the photographer was born in 1930 and died in 2008 and in which he worked almost all his life. His daughter, Keta Vieitez, was the first to grasp the priceless historical and artistic value of her father's photographs, which she exhibited for the first time in a self-produced exhibition in an improvised venue in Soutelo in 1997. Since then, there have been other exhibitions that have focused on an initial reading of the more accessible material.
On this occasion, the exhibition offers a sample laden with unpublished material and the investigation work has been more detailed and extensive: Keta Vieitez, who maintains the archive with all her passion, has provided us with a wide variety of negatives, documents, original prints, objects and memorabilia. This analysis of the testimonies of a lifetime has made it possible to reconstruct a truly unique career that is on the one hand exemplary and, on the other, extremely human. The biographical rooms show a fundamental part of an exhibition which, with its ‘specific pieces’ seeks to underline our premises and reflections on the metamorphosis of photography.
As the curator, I have been privileged to work with the original material of a photographer whose style has left its mark, rightly and indelibly so, on the history of the photographic portrait. It holds its place in one's visual memory thanks to its formal elegance, which makes each of Vieitez's photographs intense, clear and powerful”.
Enrica Viganò
Exhibition curator