Theatre of War

Called The Disaster and War Photography: Goya,the exhibition has been curated by Juan Bordes,Officer of the National Engraving at the Royal Fine Arts Academy of San Fernando. The exhibition also comprises works by modern Spanish photographers which are similar to Goya’s etchings.

Among Goya’s works on display is Tampoco,showing a soldier standing gleefully in front of the body of an executed man,and No Se Puede Mirar,in which desperate men,women and children confusedly are waiting for a fatal shooting; the presence of a well-dressed person in the group shows that war affects all social classes in the same way. Barbaros zeroes in on a guerrilla action as a firing squad takes aim in a countryside.

The exhibition opened on Friday with a large crowd of Delhi’s art and culture aficionados present. The etchings are hung on dark walls,next to enlarged modern black-and-white photographs,drawing an evident parallel between Goya’s works from the 1800s and today’s creations by prominent photographers such as Roger Fenton and Mathew Brady. Bordes explained that,unlike previous exhibitions around the world,he has “aligned the works categorically under labels such as The Front,The Victims,The Executions,The Exodus and the Pillaging,Hunger,Women and Post-War”.