La Nau holds from 17 December to 21 February the exhibition ‘Fotografía y obra pública. Paisajes de la modernidad. Lucio del Valle (1815-1874)’. Organised by the Department of Housing, Public Works and Integration of the Valencian Government and the Universitat de València, through the Demetrio Ribes Chair and the Lucio del Valle Archive, the exhibition is about photographs and modernity, about progress and public works, and about engineering history, through the figure of the civil engineer Lucio del Valle (1815-1874).
These are the first pictures of civil engineering known in Spain, which is why they are important. The first images –last year the 175 anniversary of photography was celebrated- of a public work, most of them are original from that time and unpublished. These are pictures of many public works in the Valencian Country; precisely the first daguerreotypes that are on record were those of the Valencia-Madrid road, and also big works of State engineering.
The exhibition has been presented in press conference this Thursday in La Nau with the participation of the vice-principal of Culture and Equality of the Universitat de València, Antonio Ariño; the autonomic secretary of the Department of Housing, Public Works and Integration of the Valencian Government, Josep Vicent Boira; and the exhibition curators, Inmaculada Aguilar and César Díaz-Aguado. In the guided visit of the exhibition, the organisers have signalled the singularity of the display for the great documentary value of the shown material, most of it unpublished, but also for the figure of Lucio del Valle, in Spanish civil engineering.
In 2015, the bicentennial of this engineer’s birth is commemorated and numerous acts in Madrid have already been carried out. This exhibition ends the year and is the most complete tribute to Lucio del Valle y Arana, whose thinking and work spread during the central decades of the 19 century. His career allows us to analyse the singular emergence of civil engineering in the Elizabethan period, of the construction of a modern Spain, of the consolidation of a profession, of the beginning of a new era.. His first destiny was Valencia, between 1840 and 1851, that is to say, he dedicated a third part of his professional life to the Valencian Country and it is possible to see this in the vast exhibition that is hold in the Sala Estudi General of the Universitat.
Inmaculada Aguilar and César Díaz-Aguado have stated that “both for the thematic and for the displayed funds it constitutes an unpublished exhibition which has been possible thanks to the materials given by the Lucio del Valle Archive exclusively for this exhibition”.
The display is a photographic exhibition, which allows us to participate in a journey, not only through the main works of Lucio del Valle, but also around his singular works in Spain during these decades.
The first pictures of public works: Valencia-Madrid Road
The first pictures of public works in Spain are a series of daguerreotypes that the engineer requests of the Cabrillas road (Valencia-Madrid road) in 1850 and two of them are recreated in the exhibition.
More than the 90% of the materials of this display comes from the private archive of Lucio del Valle. Archive that has passed from generation to generation in the house of the engineer in Valverde St. in Madrid. The descendant of the engineer César Díaz Aguado preserves them currently. Most of the pieces are exhibited for the first time. Together with fifty public works, most of them original from that time, visitation letters from engineers, stereoscopical pictures of public works, miniatures, portraits and photographic object.
The history of photography starts off in 1839 and became the best medium to show scientific development throughout the 19th Century. Photographers, governmental institutions and enterprises worshiped progress and modernity with unpublished photographs, singular photo albums or selective reports and exigent reports, carried out during the building of roads, trains and hydraulic work construction.
The relationship of engineer Lucio del Valle had an intimate relationship with photography. He was able to recognise this new invention, a valid and faithful medium for the dissemination and study of his profession. His works, both on private or institutional request, were the objective of some of the best photographers of that time (Laurent, Clifford, Martínez Sánchez). It is the dialogue between the captured image and the engineer. The result of this dialogue is the rich and valuable photographic fund of the Lucio del Valle Archive; archive which has come to us along generations and which guards an important collection of photographs from that period. Almost unknown until now, the exhibition presents a careful and interesting selection of original works from the period.
The photographic exhibition has two well-defined sections: the testimonies of his most important works, and the singular photographic views of the Public Engineering Works presented at the Universal Exhibition of Paris back in 1867.
Lucio del Valle used photography at many points of his professional trajectory. There is a special collection of “scenic” daguerreotypes (considered as the first photographic images of a Spanish public work) from the Valencia-Madrid road work, as well as several images of the design and bridge over the Cabriel river taken by the photographer José Martínez Sánchez. For the construction of the Canal de Isabel II and the remodeling of the Puerta del Sol, he requested a photographic testimony of the different stages to Charles Clifford.
The combination of photographic views presented at the Universal Exhibition of 1867 became a medium which provided a more complete vision of the Spanish picture. A selection that reflects the view of Lucio del Valle regarding modernity and progress in Spain with its Development policies. They represent the eyes of the technique. Lucio del Valle’s knowledge on the topic became fundamental for the naming of a President for the engineers commission who was in charge of collecting models, maps and views of these works for the exhibition in Paris, personally implicated in the development of the project.
The exhibition is aimed at highlighting his singular personality, human quality, his tremendous work in the construction of modern Spain, his view of modernity as one of the greatest engineers and protagonists in the history of Engineering.
About the catalogue
The exhibition is complemented by a catalogue. Apart from the curators, the exhibition also had the presence of prestigious collaborators in the field. Fernando Sáenz Ridruejo, Rubén Pacheco Díaz, Rosario Martínez Vázquez de Parga, Pedro Navascués Palacio, Alfonso Luján Díaz and Carlos Teixidor Cadenas have disinterestedly collaborated in order to carry out this project. A new collective vision of the work, internationally recognised, and management of Lucio del Valle, awarded with the highest distinctions, which is not so well-known currently.
Collaborating entities
The exhibition has the support of civil engineering institutions, like the Juanelo Turriano Foundation, the Civil Engineering (Roads, canals and Ports) Association of Madrid and Valencia, the School of Civil Enineering of the UPV and the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute.
Carried out by the Department of Housing, Public Works and Integration of the Valencian Government and the Universitat de València, the organization has used the Demetrio Ribes Chair and the Lucio del Valle Archive with the aim of making known and spreading the work of this engineer, who through his special link with photography shows a wider and more territorial panorama. Photography becomes documentary and heritage.
The Demetrio Ribes Chair is an external and institutional chair of the Universitat de València, created on 19 November 2003, through and agreement between the Department of Housing, Public Works and Integration of the Valencian Government and the Universitat de València. From this date it is constituted in a study centre about the History of Public Works in an extensive sense of the term, in which research projects and training, cultural and spreading programmes are developed. The trajectory of the Demetrio Ribes Chair represents the continuous collaboration between the Valencian Governmetn and the Universitat in order to make known this unknown but rich heritage. This exhibition is a good example of it.
Last update: 17 de december de 2015 14:04.
News release
