HR4RS stamp
Raul Garcia Hemonnet
The Rey Juan Carlos University, through its publications service and at the initiative of the Fine Arts professors Miguel Sánchez-Moñita and Tomás Zarza, has recently published, together with the Anastasio de Gracia Foundation, the work 'Ukraine: resisting horror ', which was officially presented yesterday in the capital.
As the teachers point out, “This book does not only talk about the war in Ukraine. The images help us so that this war allows us to talk about all the others.” “The idea of the book was to try to do something new beyond the exhibition (itinerant exhibition of some of the photographs from the book that has already toured 8 Spanish cities). We have focused a lot on creating a new narrative, through faces and landscapes of war. In this way, a dialogue is established not only with the people but with the territory. The book is not chronological, but allows for a conversation between images, and the landscape format accompanies and favors this dialogue”.
Furthermore, this interaction is enriched by photo captions that give context to the images, which allows “giving names and surnames to the victims of war, when normally we only have numbers,” point out the URJC professors, who add that “Luis De Vega is capable of sitting for hours with a person before taking a photo to learn their story, you can tell he is a photojournalist.”
The teachers affirm that this book, which is published within the framework of the 'Robert Capa was there' project (URJC-Anastasio de Gracia Foundation) allows us to continue working, from the university, on the concepts of memory and peace, through art.
The teachers also wanted to recognize the generosity of Luis De Vega by allowing them to “reframe and play with the order of the images to build a new narrative,” they indicate.
After the edition, the most imminent project of its editors is to carry out a translation into Ukrainian and a surprise related to the exhibition that will be revealed later.
The war is still there
The presentation of 'Ukraine: resisting horror' also allowed the author and editors to send the message that, although it no longer makes the big headlines, the war is still there and civilians continue to die in it.
In addition to Miguel Sánchez-Moñita and Luis De Vega, Mariano Hoya and Uría Fernández, president and director of Cultural Activities of the Anastasio de Gracia Foundation, and Mónica Ceberio, deputy director of El País, participated in the event. The representatives of the Foundation indicated that they intended to intensify the collaboration with the URJC team, for their part, the directors of El País congratulated the teachers for the book, for having published it so quickly (there are images from last spring that the author was sending while the teachers were putting together the volume).
The first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Spain, Serhii Solovei, also attended the event, as well as a delegation of refugees from that country, who arrived from Bilbao.