IDEAS AND TOPICS
The exhibit plays with the number "seven", alluding to the number of centuries to the city’s history. Each artist has created seven photographs of Bilbao in large format. These seven photographs include the seven general classics of constructed images (whether painted or photographed), listed as follows:
1. Landscape: Bilbao framed by its natural environment, 2. Literature of Manners and social relations: Life of people in a Bilbao neighborhood, 3. The view of a specific architectural element: A house on a street in a Bilbao neighborhood, 4. The boundary between public and private: A divided image of the outside (the street or a patio or terrace) and the inside ( the doorway, a room, a car), 5. Personal Relationships in Community: A group of persons belonging to a family or a group united by some intense relationship, 6.Portrait: The individual face of a particular subject who lives in Bilbao, and 7. Still-life: A meaningful collection of organic and inorganic objects placed on a domestic platform in a Bilbao house.
A linear connection is made between the overall general view to the view of certain concrete objects, much like the Russian Matruska dolls which contain several smaller identical dolls inside them. The difference between these and the exhibit’s photos, however, is that the 7x7x7 photographs do not contain other images that are identical yet smaller, but rather, ones which become more humanizing and personal as they become increasingly localized and specific.
Therefore, going from the particular to the panoramic, we see that the still-life in photo number 7 belongs to the collection of personal objects of the individual whose portrait is photograph 6, which at the same time forms part of the family group visible in photograph 5, some of whose members live or work or travel in the house or shop or car that forms the boundary line between public and private as observed in photo number 4, these persons living in the house that we see in photo number 3, which is situated in the neighborhood seen in photo 2, inside this large city – Bilbao in this case- noticeably located along a valley in photograph number 1.
As criteria, it was suggested that each artist choose a different Bilbao neighborhood and that the seven persons photographed in portraits would each be of a different socio-economic status. Thus, altogether, the seven views provide the closest sense of the diversity of the city and its people. The linking of the photos in a linear sequence (the still-life objects belonging to the individual in portrait, for example), is either real or fictitious, but in either case, believable.
The following group of seven photographers was formed for the project: Bilbao natives Begoña Zubero (1962) and Luis Izquierdo-Mosso; David Hilliard, American (1960); Tony Catany of Mallorca (1942); Humberto Rivas from Buenos Aires (1937) (winner of National Photography Award in 1997), from Oporto, Portugal (a city similar to Bilbao); Luis Palma (1958); and Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona 1955, Winner of National Photographic Award in 1998). Four of these persons had never been in Bilbao previously.
The final result is the collection of forty-nine urban and human photographic images which steer away from the typical recognizable scenery. Indeed, they could have been taken in any city of Western culture. Localism was eschewed; Instead, the condition imposed was that of metropolitanism.
Each photograph has been reproduced in large dimension format (as big as each photographer could allow according to his/her criteria). Therefore, the decision about the final dimensions of the photos, as well as the their support - whether paper, metal or methacrylate- was left up to each photographer.
The collection of pieces done by these seven photographers was presented at the REKALDE Exhibit Room during the summer of 2000, as part of the celebrations held in honor of the founding of the city seven centuries ago. However, the photographic content was created by the artists between late 1998 and early 1999, in order to allow sufficient time for writers collaborating with the catalogue to have time to prepare their texts, basing these on the photos. The catalogue published for the exhibit includes the forty-nine photographs, preceded by seven brief introductions (three pages each) prepared by seven well-known writers.
