The Museum of Contemporary Art in Villanueva de los Infantes is celebrating World Photography Day with a guided tour of the exhibition “The Imprint of the Gaze”

On the occasion of World Photography Day, on Wednesday, August 19, a guided tour took place for the exhibition ‘La huella de la mirada. Fotografía y sociedad en Castilla-La Mancha (1839-1936)’, which has been open to the public since July 12 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Villanueva de los Infantes.

Curated by photo-historian and member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Publio López Mondéjar, the exhibition is one of the outstanding contributions of the Colección Julián Castilla, which recently incorporated this important selection into its heritage holdings.

‘La huella de la mirada’ offers a journey through almost a century of the history of photography in Castilla-La Mancha, from its origins in 1839 to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Through the images gathered, visitors can explore the evolution of a territory in transformation and discover how photography became a valuable testimony to the life, customs, and social relations of the time.

The exhibition features some of the great pioneers of photography in the region, such as Charles Clifford and Jean Laurent, alongside renowned photographers like Casiano Alguacil or Luis Escobar, among others, without forgetting the important contribution of anonymous photographers, whose images allow us to recover fragments of collective memory.

The photographs offer a glimpse into an eminently agricultural Castilla-La Mancha, where social roles and relationships appear clearly defined. The exhibition brings together examples of popular and social photography, ethnographic photography, portraiture, and photojournalism, showing the progressive evolution of both photographic technique and the society that was captured before the camera.

The guided tours seek to bring this exhibition closer to the public and highlight photography as a historical document, artistic expression, and a fundamental tool for understanding the social transformation of Castilla-La Mancha. Since its opening, the exhibition has received more than 1200 visitors, a figure that highlights the interest this cultural proposal is generating.

‘La huella de la mirada. Fotografía y sociedad en Castilla-La Mancha (1839-1936)’ can be visited free of charge until September 2027 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Villanueva de los Infantes, located at Calle Cervantes, 16.