This expedition we are chasing today, the one from 1924, is the first one led by Ruth. Before setting out, she was fired from the Hispanic so she is self-employed.
‘My comfortable sure salary had vanished and from now on I should have to spend on returns from the photographs of costumes, cottages, churches, landscapes, carts, boats, nets, ploughs, objects of art, popular scenes I could make or buy and send back to the Society. The Society made a very generous settlement when I was dismissed from the staff and that money I spent on photographic equipment.’
The task is to compile information on regional costumes for a year, but the ultimate goal is to collect evidence that explains customs, ideologies, beliefs, feelings… that informs about how we conceive the world and where we place ourselves in it. The mission seems impossible. Huntington encourages her to be guided by Sorolla’s paintings and the warning he gives her at their first meeting takes on new meaning:
‘It is all an experiment, there is no certainty of the outcome…’
It is the biggest challenge she has faced so far. The uncertainty for her is similar to a small Leviathan, a monster that threatens chaos, and she prepares the journey thoroughly. She creates research schemes with what she must achieve and how to do so. She consults maps, writes down possible contacts, draws itineraries, and reads everything the Hispanic has about the area and the works by Pardo Bazán and travellers such as Bell or Richard Ford. Ford says that when foreigners arrive in the villages, everyone thinks they come full of riches and the news spreads like wildfire, attracting ‘bad people’, about which Ruth notes
‘If that be the result of the appearance of a quiet American gentleman, (…), how can one measure, what seismographic apparatus would be powerful enough to record the cataclysmic effect of the passing of a ‘señorita’ Americana who knows what rabbits are called and how many “golpes’ it takes to make a rail for a wagon wheel (…)’
This perception is reinforced in some places,
‘We were the first Americans to come to Pindo, at least since the Neolithic period, and the strange spectacle of a woman making photographs furnished the inhabitants with enough material for reminiscence and speculation to last until the next invasion.’
The Hispanic Society tells her what to photograph, the size, prices and reproduction conditions of the photographs, and the way of sending them. To focus on what she’s interested in, they send her to buy images from local photographers. In Galicia, she will buy more than a thousand. They also commission specific photos to complete other research, such as the interior of the Cathedral, for example.
Ruth copies details of Sorolla’s paintings in a notebook that she names her ‘Bible in Spain’, in honour of George Borrow’s book. Finally, Ruth must take notes on the photographs to know how to catalogue them. They also recommend her to take a field notebook, where she can write down experiences, historical matters or other details, thinking about future monographs on specific places, and in Gallegan Provinces. Pontevedra and La Coruña, a book that she will publish in 1939 as a result of her trips to Galicia.
We are missing one important detail: who will accompany her? Ruth suggests it to her father, an experienced photographer. Alfred happily agrees. He has great respect for his daughter’s work and he decides not to take photographs or judge the ones she takes. He will simply develop her prints and resolve unforeseen events. Now it’s time! Ruth is prepared and faces the potential chaos. As she does in the well-known photograph in Oseira, the only one that we say with any certainty was taken by Alfred.
As you can imagine, father and daughter have just passed through here. In addition to assailing several women and men like those at the previous stop, they take photographs of how the stalls are set out and of the vegetable sellers.
Let’s now follow them to Rúa das Casas Reais. There, we will continue to talk about how they are doing.