WELLESLEY -- That the Spanish Civil War remains so vivid 70 years after its outbreak owes as much to art as politics. The plight of the Spanish Republic, beset by fascist insurrection, inspired Picasso's ``Guernica, " Hemingway's ``For Whom the Bell Tolls, " Auden's ``Spain, " Malraux's ``Man's Hope "-- as well as one of the most famous images in photographic history, Robert Capa's ``Falling Soldier. " None of the 21 pictures in ``History in a Shoebox: Photographs From the Spanish Civil War, Lleida 1936-39," which runs at Wellesley College's Jewett Art Center through Oct. 29, makes any claim to great artistry. Yet in their documentary matter-of-factness these images convey a real and moving power. They record a specific time and place even as they show something universal, the daily lives of ordinary people caught up in dire circumstances.
Neither political nor overtly artistic, 'Shoebox' images tell story of war
During the civil war, Ramon Rius, a baker and skilled amateur photographer, lived in Lleida, a city about 100 miles west of Barcelona. It was Loyalist territory. The Loyalists, who supported the republic, comprised a fratricidal set of parties on the left, along with the unions and Basque and Catalan separatists. Opposing them were Francisco Franco's Nationalists: the military, the church, the forces of reaction.
When the Nationalists triumphed, Rius put his negatives in a shoebox, where they remained for decades. ``Shopkeepers can't afford to take sides," he would say when asked whom he supported. It's plain, though, that these photographs weren't taken by a Nationalist. No supporter of Franco would casually portray a crowd giving the clenched-fist salute, a wall covered with leftist posters, a socialist youth march. Hiding his work was politically prudent.
Yet these are by no means political pictures. The eruption of history interested Rius only insofar as it erupted into, and found itself mingling with, the everyday. An ambulance turns out to be a renovated touring car. Figures loitering by the side of the road are like young men anywhere -- bored, playful, agreeably loutish -- except they're soldiers, wearing helmets and uniforms and carrying weapons. A military checkpoint would look imposing except for the large black-and-white dog that stares at the camera, dominating the foreground of the picture.
It's no surprise that the two most shocking images in the show step outside of any sense of the routine. They show a Nationalist officer, flanked by a squad of soldiers, reading the rebels' declaration of war against the republic. There's a staginess to the scene that's both phony and oppressive. The only people shown aren't so much flesh-and-blood individuals as play actors, right down to the props they bear: drums, bayoneted rifles, revolutionary decree.