Journey to the photographic melancholy of Javier Campano

An exhibition that looks to the past does not have to be nostalgic, but in that of the photographer Javier Campano, at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, in Madrid, that feeling of a certain sadness accompanies the different series that run through his work.

Perhaps that is why Campano, a 72-year-old from Madrid, was moved on the day of the presentation, seeing a sample of his "so great" career, which brings back "so many memories."

There are 150 images, all in black and white, in small format, which can be seen until August 28 as part of the PHotoEspaña program.

The exhibition catalog doubles that number of photos.

Photograph taken by Javier Campano in Italy, in 1975. LAFUENTE ARCHIVE

The most attractive set, to recognize characters from an era, is that of the portraits of the Madrid scene, which Campano passed through, but in a discreet background compared to other more famous figures.

There is precisely one of Alberto García-Alix showing the tattoos on his arm on the train from Madrid to Vigo for the famous collective that was held in the Galician city in 1986;

or Pedro Almodóvar with a big mustache at the Rastro.

These are just a couple of examples of a section in which a shot of Juan Carlos I stands out on the day the Madrid Botanical Garden was reopened in 1981. The king's head appears among the foliage in a picture reminiscent of that of the hunting monarch in recent times and in some African country.

The curator of this exhibition entitled

, the EL PAÍS journalist Elsa Fernández-Santos explained to the media that the exhibited material refers “to the beginnings” of the author, and attributed that melancholy look to a triple condition: “That he took the photos on Sundays, in the hours preceding the start of a new week;

that the travel ones he took in September, the month that ends the summer, since many are from places that no longer exist ”.

Campano himself corroborates this in the interview with her in the catalogue: “Melancholy is inherent in photography”.

Tenerife, 1987, image by Javier Campano. LAFUENTE ARCHIVE

The Lafuente Archive (Cantabria), from which the material comes and which is collaborating for the fifth time with PHotoEspaña in the staging of an exhibition, contains some 850 black and white photographs, mostly

, by Campano.

Also more than 1,000 negatives, and posters, publications and press clippings.

A set integrated in the collections of the Lafuente Archive dedicated to the Transition and the counterculture.

Like so many photographers in Spain, Campano did not immediately arrive at the art of the image.

Before he studied law and practiced as a lawyer in a bank.

Born in 1950, his interest in photography began in the mid-seventies.

Self-taught, his first serious contact was at the famous Madrid school Photocentro, where he had his first solo show in 1979, and at the groundbreaking magazine

, in which he published his initial works.

Between 1978 and 1980 he was part of the Ojo Móvil team, which through architecture and photography called for better urban planning for the capital's neighborhoods that were expanding with new infrastructure.

Brother of the painter Miguel Ángel Campano, this circumstance facilitated his access to commissions to reproduce works of art for catalogs and to be able to photograph the world of artists: Fernando Zóbel, Juana de Aizpuru, Gustavo Torner... It is a very productive time, in which he will also publish in magazines of the scene, such as

and will take his first steps in still photography at the cinema.

Special mention deserves the reproduction of it in real size, centimeter by centimeter, of

in a double number of 700 pages for the magazine

His creative display in street photography predominates in the exhibition: shadows, details, diagonals of streets, kiosks, shop windows with their reflections on the glass, or cinemas, from which he was attracted by their giant posters, almost always with little presence human;

They are moments that he captured in aimless walks in which he let himself be carried away by Madrid, for example in the Rastro, with that wandering eye that indicates the title of the exhibition.

They are snapshots where his sensitivity is appreciated to extract beauty from a reality that almost no one would notice.

The recognition of this delicacy did not come until a retrospective in 2004, at the Reina Sofía Museum.

In 2017, a large panorama of her work was mounted again, this time in color, at the Canal de Isabel II Hall in Madrid.

Madrid, 1975. The cinemas, with their huge posters, attracted the gaze of Javier Campano. LAFUENTE ARCHIVE

Now in the Lázaro Galdiano you can see brushstrokes of his trips to Egypt (1976), Italy (1975-1976) and the United States (1983).

From the latter, his well-known series on a panama hat, which one of his fellow travelers, the director of

magazine , Gonzalo Armero, had bought.

The result, enigmatic and funny, would become a book.

Whether passing a bus in Madrid, on a chipped wall in Venice or a sunset in Alexandria, Campano has always sought to arouse emotion in the viewer and, as he says in the catalog interview, "that people pay more attention to what has around."

A photograph, in short, that serves to “teach how to look and discover”.

Javier Campano.

The wandering eye 1975-1987'

Lazaro Galdiano Museum.

Until August 28.

Free entrance.

Hours, from Tuesday to Sunday, from 9.30 to 15.00.

Closed Monday.

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