Ruth Writes

You probably haven’t heard of me if you are from anywhere in the world other than Galicia, which is in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. However, in Galicia I am actually quite well known, even famous. I’m not bragging, but they’ve written some very nice things about me. They have also organized exhibits of my photographs. I definitely feel honored. 

However, I am someone who has become famous (albeit decades after I took all the photographs) for something I never actually did. This is what I want to speak with Lavinia about, because she is really impressed with my work the fact that I carried out my project prior to the civil war (1936 was the start of the disaster), that I was a woman, and that the quality was so incredible. None of these are my words. I just did what I was commissioned to do in the U.S. I agree that crossing the Atlantic five times in the span of about seven years was a challenge not many people can handle, however, because of course those voyages were by ship.

I forgot to introduce myself, and you should of course know my name before I meet with Dr. Lavinia Rivers to discuss her research on my work. Lavinia wants me to get my due and is appalled that my own country ignored me, while Galicia, where few people knew English, especially back then, has shown me the utmost respect. 

I am Ruth Matilda Anderson and have appeared in a few stories written by a woman who lives on the Maine coast. She has asked me not to mention her name here, so I will do as she asks. I am best known for my book, also cited by the Maine writer, Gallegan Provinces of Spain: Pontevedra and La Coruña. New York, The Hispanic Society of America (1939). I have two other books, on the off chance that you are interested in reading them. One is Spanish Costume: Extremadura. New York, The Hispanic Society of America (1951). The other is Costumes Painted by Sorolla in his Provinces of Spain. New York, The Hispanic Society of America (1957). 

All right, I admit that might be too much bibliography, but please bear with me. I am prone to documenting information ether through photographs or essays. I try to provide facts people might wish to have. I am the first to point out that the three publications listed above were all produced by my employer, but that is logical. The Hispanic Society of America, founded in 1904, was a very important institution. Its founder, Archer Huntington, had a vision and hired me to help him achieve it. The Society paid for my travel, of course, so t is logical that it would publish the work it had funded.

My book from 1939 is the one that interests Lavinia. It has only had one printing, but you can still buy it from the Society for a very reasonable price, given the quality of the edition. The content of this book is what Lavinia and I are going to discuss in our meeting. Do not be disturbed or skeptical because I lived from 1893 to 1983 and so would seem unable to sustain an intellectual discussion. The two of us are resourceful women and we can work all that out. 

Now to begin. What I want to discuss most of all is how I am famous (at least in one part of the world) for something I didn’t do. It won’t be an easy conversation, but we will manage to communicate. Lavinia appears to be quite perceptive, despite being an academic. What you will be getting is the transcription of our talk, which I recorded and edited so as to only include the essential portions. There are no photos, because it is long after 1983 and Lavinia asked not to be photographed.

***

“Hello, Lavinia. How are you? How are you doing in Galicia?”

“Hello, Ruth. I’m fine, and absolutely love it here.”

“I’m not surprised. So tell me, please: What exactly is it you are studying about my work and why does it interest you?”

“I am interested in the reasons why Galicians all love what you did. After all, you were a foreigner and were sent to photograph costumes like the ones Sorolla painted. Except Sorolla had paints, and bright colors, while you mostly made black and white photographs. You did take about ten thousand of those, however.”

“Yes, I was a woman, so I was supposedly going to be good at getting good images of costumes, clothing, things like that. Except that the costumes depicted by Sorolla were things people wore on special occasions, holidays, things like that. I got distracted by other things. Daily life. I didn’t really follow the instructions that were given to me by Archer Huntington, head of the Hispanic Society of America.”

“Yet you did take pictures of so many things - many more than Sorolla painted. His work was rather limited, in that sense. Nobody wore those fancy get-ups on a daily basis, so how well did he capture Galicians?”

“Well, you are certainly correct there. However, I don’t just want to discuss how I didn’t try to reproduce with two-color photography what had been so well done, in brilliant colors, by a master painter. I wasn’t stupid and knew I couldn’t compete.”

“True, Ruth, but you did so much more. Everybody here knows about you and admires your work. I haven’t seen any disparaging commentaries and people are still impressed at how you lugged all that heavy yet delicate photographic equipment around using various sorts of transportation.”

“It wasn’t always fun, I’ll say. But I want you to know that despite the positive response from the Galicians, I did not take the photos.”

“What??? You didn’t do what???

“I didn’t take the photographs. I developed many of them and used the camera, but the images I do not claim as mine.”

“Please don’t tell me it was your father who took them, please don’t. I mean, yes, he traveled with you some of the time, but I really don’t want to hear that he was the one doing the work while you, his dutiful daughter, tagged along.”

“No, no, not at all. I need to clarify what I mean by I didn’t take the pictures. I used the camera and all the accessories, I went to many places from one end to the other and from one side to the other of the four provinces. I traveled as far as I could with the time I had and tried to move in as close as possible. That was me and nobody else.”

“That’s a relief, Ruth, but what do you mean about not taking the photos, then?”

“Lavinia, I just told you. I used the equipment, but the images that resulted from my efforts are not mine.”

“Please explain.”

“Please listen carefully.”

Something in me probably rebelled at being sent to copy or verify somebody else’s work. I had to look for myself knowing I could record with a single palette and needed to find more than color in what I found. Festival dress was so restricting. It washes out all the angles, curves, and lines that the face has. It adorns the body, but in doing so it separates it from daily life. It distracts viewers from the surroundings. It is a work of art, but it doesn’t provide as much information as one would think there is in such pretty appearances.

What I mean is, a costume is meant to show off handiwork, style, apparel for doing nothing but dancing or strolling about. It also might be to advertise one’s class or to acquire a spouse. My photos were intended to trace the lines in weathered faces, the sunken cheeks of the destitute, the tears in children’s eyes, the strength of bodies doing common labor, the pride in still having an old suit to wear on Sundays. 

I wanted to see the people’s thoughts, talk with their animals and tools, touch the surfaces in their homes. I needed a certain light and a certain type of shadow. Sometimes, many times, my work and subjects had to wait for the rain to stop. This is Galicia, you know.

I couldn’t stop looking, and at some point realized that I no longer was taking the photographs. Instead, it was the people and their spaces, their material lives, their knowing exactly where they were at all times - those were the ones in charge. I gave up and pretended I had no free will. I began to let Galicia come to me rather than to set out on my pre-planned routes. Routes planned without knowing where I was going, what Galicia was. 

Just one example, or maybe two:

Father and I were lodged at a hotel in the old part of Santiago when we heard a commotion down below in the ancient plaza. There was a wooden cart, oxen, and people involved in a transaction or delivery of some sort. This scene had little good material to offer for documenting costumes through photos, but I became fascinated by the construction of the carts. Maybe it’s the Nebraska woman in me, given that I was born out there…

I wasn’t in control, wasn’t selecting shot perspectives. I was only a pair of eyes whose camera was being told to record the sight below my hotel window. There is more to this, however. If you only look at my photographs of this moment or others that are very similar, you will see the curves and angles I mentioned earlier. What you aren’t seeing are the words I wrote about that cart and others, about what Galicians make and sell in order to survive, about how they eat and pray.

Lavinia interrupts:

“I know your book, I’ve read it.”

“Not many have, though. That’s why few know me and you can still get copies from the 1939 edition, that hasn’t sold out yet.”

“So your words are as important as your photos?”

“Let me explain it better.”

If you read that chapter, you will be focusing on the visual features of the cart in the plaza. However, only my writing will tell you how drawn I was to the parts of the cart and also to the names of the parts. My writing will also tell you that I have an extensive vocabulary for artistic, social, and historical topics, down to parts of carts or buggies or cathedral arches. In the case of the oft-mentioned cart, I included the terms given to me by locals. I wrote them in Galician more often than not. That tells you how either I was speaking to people who did not know the official language, Spanish, or that I wanted to be as close to the reality I was seeing as possible.

My book is another lens. It is known to so few. Even the Galicians who praise me as a photographer, a respectful one, have not read my book. They only know part of me.

And you, Lavinia do not seem to have figured out quite that I am famous for something I did not do. I did not take those photographs, not after the first dozen or so. They took me, they captured my eyes and took me in. I simply followed their bidding. I looked at people, pigs, huts, plows, and yes, many more carts, and they all drew on something I didn’t know I had. 

They were in charge. They told me where I needed to go, what questions I needed to ask, to really see past that whole costumes thing made so visible by Sorolla. A photographer in my time had to make conscious decisions where to set up her equipment, what angle, what background. Nothing spontaneous like with digital photography. I was merely the porter of the camera who was being told what was of real value in Galicia. 

Do you really think a girl from Nebraska, residing in a city on the east coast of the U.S., could waltz in to rural Galicia and “get it,” know what the culture was like? Not on your life. I took the pictures I was asked to take. I was asked by the land and its people. That sounds horribly sentimental, but I prefer to be straightforward. I felt like I was being led around by someone holding a string, like I was getting entangled with the country, being woven into a tapestry or spun into bobbin lace.

My book will also tell you how I tried, I really did, to talk to people. Somebody wrote that my photos were so perceptive because I spent time talking to my subjects rather than snapping the camera and rushing away. That means we talked, we used words, before the camera even entered the picture. (Bad pun.) It means I have put words in my book to tell a lot that is not captured in images.

Sometimes I think I am dishonest. I am called a photographer by profession, but the fact is, I am a writer by vocation. My written portraits are equal to the others, and perhaps better. And I wrote the book. I didn’t take the photographs.

“I understand perfectly, Ruth.”

“I think you do.”

“I understand because there was something about you I didn’t get. Nobody, including feminist scholars, in our home country knows about you. There’s more than meets the eye.” (Bad pun.)

“Actually, Lavinia, I think you understand because you are interested in me as a professional woman and if you write about me you’ll be highly regarded.”

“Please don’t think that…”

“Lavinia, you’re also interested in my story because you wish it were your story. You, of course, would have modern photographic equipment and transportation. You wouldn’t have to have a chaperone like I did. You have a GPS and an iPone.”

“And…?”

“You know unconsciously that you could have my life and it scares you to death. It’s the reason, or one of two reasons, why you’re having trouble doing your sabbatical research on me. You like Santiago, you like the people, you like working on your own, away from university responsibilities. Think about it.”

Lavinia was still, as if looking into the lens of a camera. She needed to maintain that stillness until she was sure the resulting image would be a true representation of who she was.

***

Those photographs are not mine.

I am famous for something I didn’t do.

However, I am grateful to the Galicians who did it for me.