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EIVISSA - IBIZA hundred years of light and shade
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Ibiza�s journey through the twentieth century is charted in this collection of 170 photographs by thirty leading European photographers, among them masters such as Jos� Ortiz Echag�e and the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann. Most of these images are here published for the first time from original archive sources. Together they form a moving portrait of what has in recent years become a Mediterranean legend.
To the outsider it was the Mediterranean of the Odyssey : the black umbrellas of fig trees spread over light-gorged earth: women in witch-black beating down the almonds with bamboo poles; a famished Ibicenco hound stalking hoopoes; the solemn hooting of a conch shell blown to announce a catch of tunny; lights bobbing all along the shore at night as trident-armed fishermen went shining their torches into the green goblets of water in the rocks.
Norman Lewis, �The Passing of San Vicente� (1968)
The photographers
An�nimo - Narc�s Puget - Mas i Ginest� - Guillermo Bestard - Jos� Ortiz Echag�e - Mario von Bucovich - Leopoldo Plasencia - Emilio Orsinger - Raoul Hausmann - Elfriede Stegemeyer - Domingo Vi�ets - Antoni Campany� - Joaquim Gomis - Pere Catal� i Roca - Francesc Catal�-Roca - Jos� Torres Andi�� - Josep M� Subir� - Walter L�ubli - Hans Helfritz - Josep Planas Montany� - Cas Oorthuys - Josep Juan Juan - Harold Liebow - Rolph Blakstad - Ilse Mayer Gehrken - Josep Vilanova - Cyril Taylor - Augusto Vallmitjana - Josep Buil Mayral - Charles Camberoque - Helga Sittl - Oriol Maspons
The Project
Martin Davies, an English teacher and former curator in London�s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Parisian-born Philippe Derville, an enthusiast of old photographs have spent the past year working together to complete this book. Martin Davies has during the previous six years been investigating the island�s traditional architecture and acquiring old travel books, postcards and photographs. Likewise Philippe Derville is a long-time collector of old photos depicting marine life in and around Ibiza and Barcelona.
It took fifteen months to complete the project. Perhaps the most interesting discovery was the Austro-Croatian baron, Mario von Bucovich, whose work was unearthed in two archives, one in the Netherlands, the other in Palma de Mallorca. Author of two classic photobooks of Paris and Berlin, he toured the Pityuses extensively in 1934, capturing authentic scenes at annual pig-killing feasts (matances). Almost at the same time in Paris, the ex-Dadaist Raoul Hausmann was falling love with a young Neue Sachlichkeit photographer, Elfriede Stegemeyer. Back in Ibiza, the two went on photographic field trips, setting up their tripods side-by-side but managing to produce completely different visions of the island. The front-cover of Stegemeyer�s unpublished album, now in a private collection in Normandy, is here shown for the very first time.
The search for photos was accompanied by a search for texts. Biographical r�sum�s of the photographers was the first priority, for which information was gathered from families, friends, books and websites. For the introduction, the initial idea was to use a text by a well-known writer, but as the stories around the photographers themselves emerged, it seemed appropriate to write a specially-tailored text. To this was added Raoul Hausmann�s account of the art of photography in Ibiza. Captions too were researched, bringing in the expertise of fishermen, parish priests and dozens of elderly country people. A snapshot from an archive in Zurich or Amsterdam would act like a key, unlocking parts of their memories which had been sealed off for decades. Finally, some literary extracts were included, whose words seemed to bring out something hinted at in the pictures.
Catalan, Spanish and English are the main languages, while German and French translations of the introductory texts are included. Extracts are in their original language, with Spanish, Catalan and English translations.
� Ediciones El Faro, Murcia 10, 5�-1�, 07800 Eivissa/Ibiza
� Martin Davies and Philippe Derville
ISBN 84-605-9497-1, mar� 2000
Dip�sit Legal: I-18-2000
Printing: Gr�ficas Pitiusas
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