Agencia EFE

Agencia EFE. Thirty years of photography in the Valencian Community is an extensive panorama of the main historic events that have written the history of the provinces of Valencia, Alicante and Castellón, as seen by the restless eyes of a group of photographers who have worked with or formed part of the permanent staff of the Valencia branch of the agency. It presents moments of varying degrees of hardship or joy that show us very significant changes. The selection, presented in chronological order, also represents the development of graphic reporters in a very important period, when radical changes were taking place in the sphere of politics and social relationships, providing new ways of observing reality. It is a range of photographs that shows us many pictures published at the time, in Valencia or elsewhere in Spain or abroad, in a variety of media attracted by the degree of topicality that they represented then. Here we find scenes of sad episodes that moved society, but we also see the reflection of simple actions in the everyday life of Valencians which are the finest example of normality in a country and are even harder to obtain, requiring, as they do, a special sensitivity in the way of seeing, devoid of the sensationalism generally so sought after by the media. EFE is the leading information agency in the Spanish language. Since it was established in 1939, a series of literary and graphic correspondents have supplied news of all that was happening in Spain, making use of whatever scanty resources were available. With the aid of a network of assistants all over the country, the news stories were channelled from Madrid. But almost at once, with the expansion of Agencia EFE, it was necessary to set up further offices in the regions and abroad. The creation of a branch office in Valencia in January 1972 led to a considerable increase in reports from the provinces of Valencia, Alicante, Castellón and Murcia, at a time when news stories were put together by photographers who contributed on an ad hoc basis, in response to requests received from Madrid. The exhibition shows photographs taken by various agency reporters, many of them anonymous, before the time when Francisco Pérez Aparisi, in the early seventies, or Primitivo del Picó Parra, in the late seventies, began to present their work with a certain regularity, at a point that coincided with the introduction of editing terminals and news distribution computers, the start of a new era of modernisation that has never halted since. In the last part of the exhibition there is work from the late nineties together with more recent pictures, taken by graphic reporters such as Manuel Bruque, Doménec Castelló, Juan Carlos Cárdenas, Jorge M. Cencillo, Alberto Estévez, Pep García Morell, Joaquín de Haro Rodríguez, Pradip J. Phanse and Antonio Pradas, among others. Photographers who, thanks to satellites and the use of digital equipment, transmit their work to any part of the world along the so-called information highways, without the need to print a copy on paper. A system that allows manipulation of images, which can be sent directly to systems for printing newspapers, magazines, books or media of other kinds, achieving not only improved technical resolution but also financial savings and, most important of all, an increase in the speed of transmission. A race that seems to have no limit, leaving in the hands of reporters and photographers the finest tools for producing a quality product, in terms of both its ethical and aesthetic content, aimed at optimum transmission of the events that mark the passing of time.