Charles Clifford and the monumental record of Spain

  September 30, 2025 - February 8, 2026

Curators: Javier Piñar and Carlos Sánchez
Location: Rooms on Floor -1

The image of Spain during the 19th century cannot be conceived without the figure of British photographer Charles Clifford (1819-1863), a pioneer in using photography as a novel instrument for projecting the image of our country internationally. He belongs to the generation of early photography professionals who used calotype as a tool for research and projection of new themes and forms of expression. All of them were passionate about the expressive possibilities offered by the new photographic technology, and they opened up new avenues for closely linking it to the modernization efforts that marked the present and also to the cult of the past that fueled nationalist discourse, masterfully expressed in the graphic inventory of their monumental heritage.

Behind the apparent continuity and unity of style evident in his work, one can detect many technological changes driven by the adoption of new cameras, new sensitive media, and personal developing procedures, just as there are numerous changes in the subjects of photographic interest in his work. Interested in everything that was happening in Spain, but also conditioned by the varied nature of the commissions he had to accept in order to survive, disparate subjects coexist in his work. And they coexist with a great deal of harmony, as if they were all part of the same photographic discourse aimed at showing Spaniards the values of their own country and surprising European viewers with the uniqueness of that world that stretched beyond the Pyrenees, half in the East and half in the West, straddling the picturesque past and modernity.

However, his photographic work is thematically very consistent because it focuses on the nature and future of Spain's monumental heritage, which is the subject of his Álbum Monumental de España (Monumental Album of Spain), the project that is the focus of this exhibition.

Clifford began his career in photography around 1850, ending abruptly with his death in January 1863. During just over a decade of activity, he evolved technically from daguerreotypes to calotypes and, from 1855 onwards, to collodion negatives and albumen prints. At the same time, he abandoned portraiture early on, turning his attention to recording urban and monumental landscapes, and diversifying his clientele and distribution channels as he expanded and consolidated his themes, accepting a wide variety of commissions from academics, architects, engineers, the nobility, and the Spanish, French, and British royal families. For many of them, he would produce monographic albums, and thanks to the thematic opportunities provided by the commissions, as well as the images he collected on his own initiative, he generated an extensive archive of images of Spain, part of which he published in two publishing initiatives, Scramble through Spain and the Álbum Monumental de España, which made his work known throughout Europe and would make him an essential reference point for the image of Spain.

RELATED ACTIVITIES

September 30, 7 p.m. Masterclass with the curators. Theater

WITH THE SUPPORT OF