EL OCASO DEL IMPERIO

The photographs of  Ryszard Kapuściński featured in this exhibition were found some years ago in the private archive of a famous reporter. They date back to a period spanning from 1981-1991, when the photographer was traveling around the republics of the former Soviet Union. Ryszard Kapuściński had planned to organise an exhibition of photographs taken from his travels: he personally selected photographs and pictures, and then kept the negatives in brown envelopes, where they remained for a number of years.   The first time he was exhibited, in the National Gallery of Art “Zachęta”, in Warsaw, the images shown were selected by the Ryszard Kapuściński photographic archive coordinator, Izabela Wojciechowska (1954-2010), who incorporated, alongside the initial selection, photographs that came from the travels made by Kapuściński (1979), after forty years of being away from his native Pińsk. Thanks to this addition, the photographic journey through these regions acquires a personal dimension.   The Ryszard Kapuściński photographic archive consists of almost ten thousand images, and possibly constitutes a small part of his body of photographic work: that which has been salvaged. Although this archive is predominated by snapshots of Africa, a continent that has been the focus of previous exhibitions, the uniqueness of “El ocaso del imperio” is precisely due to its context. The landscape and theme of these photographs differs from that presented on previous occasions: the unique geographical boundary that the artist has crossed in his travels is gathered up in this exhibition it was that of the neighbouring empire. A world seemingly much closer, yet no less strange…   The images attest to both a talented photojournalist, and the author’s artistic quality. Among them are photographs dedicated to the historical event that marked the failure of the “August Coup”, perpetrated in Moscow as well as various snapshots of the journey that took the author through imperial Russia. The landscapes with houses and cemeteries are complemented with human portraits.   Madrid is the first International destination for this exhibition.