16/10/2006
Victoria-Gastiez, 16 November
2006. Prestigious photographer Alberto Schommer (1928) has
rediscovered Vitoria-Gasteiz, the city of his birth, thanks to a
photography project in which he captures the restoration work being
carried out on the Santa María Cathedral. His images
– these days he is immersed completely in field work
– will be included in a luxurious publication produced in
conjunction with Vitoria-Gasteiz Town Hall and the Santa
María Cathedral Foundation, with sponsorship from Grupo
EULEN, which is in charge of guided tours to the church in Vitoria.
The book will comprise around 60 photographs and will be available to
the public at the beginning of next year, probably in January. This
photographic project has brought Schommer back into contact with the
monument that his father Alberto Schommer Koch also had occasion to
photograph extensively, together with other aspects of daily life in
Vitoria-Gasteiz and Álava, back in the nineteen
sixties.
Alberto Schommer has watched photographic equipment develop throughout
his career over 40 years, including the Polaroid and compact camera
through to digital technology, which he considers
“vital”. He describes himself as an
“artistic photographer”. He is not sorry he turned
down the tempting offer he received to become a fashion photographer
for the celebrated Balenciaga in the nineteen fifties.
His series portraying the transition rocketed him to fame. “I
realised I had enormous power in my hands, but I couldn´t
work like Richard Avedon or Irving Penn, who lived in free
countries… I had to do something that would be interpreted
by some as criticism but as cryptic by others”. The most
artistic dimension of Schommer´s fast and somewhat
chameleonic work is yet to be discovered.
Schommer is known mainly for his portraits of contemporary Spanish
personalities. Born in Vitoria in 1928, his father, Alberto
Schommer Koch, was also a photographer, meaning his relationship with
the camera began when he was still very young. He studied
photography in the German city of Cologne and continued to study later
on in Paris, after which he opened a studio in Madrid.
Between 1969 and 1973 he shot his famous psychological portraits, in
which he concentrates the interest on reflecting the social roles of
the characters he photographs. His evolution as a portrait
photographer continued with the Descubrimientos and Máscaras
series.
His creative work also touches on other fields, where light and
materials take on a sculptural feel, such as the Civilizaciones y
Cascografías series, and others where he penetrates aspects
of Spanish culture and society, such as the La erotica del flamenco
series.
His work has appeared in the press and in books, and he has been the
subject of many exhibitions throughout the world. In 1978 he was
invited by Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe to exhibit in Japan, and
he has also shown his works at the Museo Espáñol
de Arte Contemporáneo and the Centre for Creative
Photography in Tucson. In 1996 he was made a member of the
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.
Photographic record
of the restoration
Photography is evidence of life and treasure of incalculable value for
future generations. This is why the Santa María
Cathedral Foundation started up a unique programme among its wide
activities to popularise the cultural and tourism aspects of the
project in 2001. The aim is to compile an archive of photographs that
offers, from the personal view of their photographers, different views
of the restoration plan until its completion.
The Santa María Cathedral Foundation began this photographic
project in 2001 with Galician photographer Vari Caramés (El
Ferrol, 1953), one of the most unique figures in Spanish contemporary
photography, and his work “En la Catedral”. All the
exhibitions tour different cities in Spain. More than 250,000
people saw the work of Caramés in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Palacio
de Montehermosos), León (Cathedral), Seville (Cathedral) and
Santiago de Compostela (Fonesca Room at the University of Santiago de
Compostela).
The next photographer commissioned to capture the church restoration
project in Vitoria was José Manuel Navia (Madrid, 1957),
whose exhibition “Desde la Catedral” was on show at
the Museo Artium. After visiting Madrid, Barcelona and
Valencia, Navia and Caramés had a joint exhibition at the
Instituto Cervantes in Lisbon, as part of the Portuguese presentation
of the Santa María Cathedral Restoration Project.