This exhibition presents a work of extraordinary characteristics that brings together the artistic and the documentary, sociological changes and technology under the theme of a corporate venture begun more than eighty years ago.
In its early years, during the mid-1920's, Telefónica decided to undertake the difficult task of documenting, through photographs and film, what was to be a profound technological, and consequently historical, revolution in Spain at the time.
Some of the era's most prominent photographers, or "graphic reporters" were hired for the job and, while bearing witness to a series of technical innovations (the fist telephone lines connecting the first towns, the first public telephone booths, the construction of the Company's new corporate headquarters, the first advertising banners…), they did not refrain from reflecting, with a decidedly artistic spirit, the fascination with the advent of new social habits, the appearance of new professions, and the changes in the rural and urban landscape, elements that all in all have become part of the Spanish imagery and which convey this notion of modernity and progress that has always been linked to telecommunications.
On account of its historic nature and the scope of its content (more than twelve thousand photographs were taken between 1924 and 1931), the Telefónica Photo Archive has an internationally unique array of works, and the current exhibition has been made possible thanks to Fundación Telefónica's meticulous effort to recover, catalogue and digitalize the collection's extensive body of content, with the collaboration of two renown professionals such as Rafael Levenfeld and Valentín Vallhonrat, who have also been appointed as the exhibition curators.
