Santos Yubero, the rogue, authentic and captivating photographer: Indalecio Prieto got him out of jail, Carmen Polo adored him

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A

pro

who doesn't miss a jarana and who knows even the scorer. The photographer

together all the clichés of the Madrilenian. By origin and by character. A laudable reporter, he was where he had to be - a tiresome epic of the profession - and he didn't

from a bird's eye view. For this reason, and because he reached 90 years of age, he treasured half a century of the city's history, with a superb documentary archive - half a million captures from the 1920s to 1974 - and with a wide-angle look. Without his work, Madrid would be incomplete.

"In his images, there is the Madrid of all time," underlines

, with three and a half years of research on the background of the Civil War of this professional, who, after the coup of State, passed through the Madrid Model prison. His legacy is a slit into the past in black and white, in which to delve into the

exhibition

, at the

until next January 15.

"He felt the circumstances of the city as his own. With charisma, he moved well in all environments."

Thus, the exhibition brings together fifty of his photographs between the 30s and 50s: from panoramic views of

or the Sunday bustle on the beach of the capital -before, the dip in the Manzanares was allowed-, to the smut of taverns. and the cracked skin of esparteros, waffle makers, slaughterhouse butchers, traperas, street sweepers in Sol ... And without forgetting the pale glow of theaters, figures such as

, folkloric and

, the child prodigy of chess

or the presentation of

.

Corrala and Lavapiés Market in Mesón de Paredes (1935).

"He was not the best of his generation," says De las Heras: "He had to compete with colleagues of the height of

or

[with exhibition right now in the Canal de Isabel II Room] and his technique was adapted to technology. In the war he worked with a plate camera ".

The militiamen had requisitioned his modern equipment after his arrest.

He came to photography by chance;

he wanted to be a comedian, but failed because of, he said, his looks.

It is at the Las Navas clinic, where his

treated

, when he begins to fiddle with a camera.

"He reminds me of

, not in quality, but in that he was a character, because of his clothing, his way of acting ...".

Legazpi horse slaughterhouse (November 16, 1934).

Always dressed and chubby, except in 37-38, thin and without a tie in the Madrid that resists, he was the most chameleonic of the reporters.

He was consolidated during the

, but, having worked for the Catholic publishing house, he was imprisoned just after the

.

It will be the socialist Indalecio Prieto who mediates for his release.

During the

, while Alfonso, always a close friend, was denied a press card, Yubero was appointed director of the graphic section of the newspaper

, where he retired in 1974, just before

death.

.

With contacts, a good eye for the soul of those portrayed and a gift of opportunity, "he was, above all, a survivor", De las Heras sentence: "He was intelligent, he worked in both libertarian and Catholic newspapers. He did not close doors" .

And he was the head photographer for

.

Old Tasca de Puerta Cerrada (1934).

"He knew how to choose emotional themes that fit the context," because he breathed with the city.

de

, but from childhood in

, where he trains "his close and accurate gaze."

He spent his adolescence employed in neighborhood shops, from which he never moves.

His Madrid is "a Madrid in constant shock", explains De las Heras, with his encyclopedic knowledge: "The republican with those liberties of cabarets and cultural spaces, who readjusted himself due to the War, but who maintains his life, going to the cinema, theater, as he portrays with his rearguard gaze; and the one from the 40s, so sad and mourning, or the one from the 50s, which changes ".

To contemplate his work is to

.

"He captured aspects that were not interesting for newspaper covers, he photographed the anonymous man a lot, the one who circulates around the city."

He completed the image of the city, in the style of the enjoyment of watching life go by from a busy bench.

Santos Yubero portrays Concha Constanzo and Carola Fernán Gómez, mother of Fernando Fernán Gómez (1934).

Alcobendas allows the reunion with the funds that Yubero sold to the Regional Archive in the mid-80s -before he tried with the Efe agency- for

and that staged a first major retrospective in 2010, promoted by the photohistorian Publio López Mondéjar, unconditional of graphic memory.

Obsessed with being a recorder, Yubero kept his negatives in a wooden cabinet in his house on Calle de la Cabeza.

"He was always concerned with

...".

Also in that he was unique in his guild.

After his retirement, he only picked up the camera again on one occasion: Franco's funeral, in color.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Madrid

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• Francisco Franco Bahamonde

• Alfredo Di Stéfano

• Photography

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• history

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