The train of flamenco instants: the sevillan photojournalist Paco Sanchez exhibs his photographs

Paco Sánchez, with the camera and Poveda.

Chano Lobato, Fosforito, José Mercé, Merche Esmeralda, Sara Baras, El Pele, Paco de Lucía, Diego El Cigala, Matilde Coral, Vicente Amigo, María Pagés, Pastora Galván, Blanca del Río, Miguel Poveda... the list is interminable. Almost all the names of flamenco, of today and yesterday, passed by the lens of the photojournalist Paco Sanchez (Dos Hermanas 1946), who see now, how his pictures gets movement.

In the framework of the International Festival of Las Minas, that reaches this edition the half century of life, several trains of long way that links up Cartagena city (close to La Union, where the competition is developed) with Valencia and Barcelona will show a selection of 60 pictures, portraits, performances and flamenco atmospheres, under the title “A train of famous artists” that could be contemplated by more than 75.000 travellers during this month, according to Renfe estimations.

The pictures- big format, in black and white and colours- composed a trajectory by “legendary figures” that came to the Festival in these 50 years of life. Moreover, there is a review to Paco Sanchez work, Prized of Plastic Arts 2010 of the Cátedra de Flamencología of Jerez, radio professional, linked to the jondo world from 1975.

He is now current coordinator of Flamenco radio.com and collaborates with some of local Medias like the missing Pueblo and Suroeste, “making photos of all types”. “Went to pay tribute to Farruco on the 1^st of February 1975- he remembers, thanks to a very tidy file- and I met all the best artists of flamenco: Fernanda and Bernarda de Utrera, Camarón, Terremoto, Antonio Mairena....". Several months after, he went to La Puebla de Cazalla for another recital: Diego Clavel and Jose Menese played together, and “the dramatic force of the sing was impressive”.

It was the beginning of an intimate and fruitful relationship between Sanchez and the flamenco universe, as fan and as witness, camera in the hand, of the evolution of this art and the technology that allowed him to capture it. “The digital revolutionized the photography. You loose the fear to make pictures. I come from the time where a roll cost thousand pesetas and develop it other two thousand, a picture was very expensive” he said.

The exhibition presented in Murcia is, moreover, the reflection of the human condition. From the “impetuous and visceral” pictures of his youth he passed to “calm photographs” of the maturity. He had to come across many challenges during many years, like for instance “make a publishable picture to Jose Monge Camaron. All the pictures he took were closed up and reflected such a dramatic character, and such a pain on his face that I could not published them”.

With various photo exhibitions planned, emphasizes the one that will take up, during the Bienal, the “Cuarto Alto del Apeadero del Real Alcázar”. Under the title “Unforgettable”, Voices for memory, Sanchez will show in pictures “the memory” of the flamenco sing in the photographs of Chocolate, La Niña de la Puebla, Valderrama or El Gallina, to mention some of the singers he met again after having found a file of the best flamenco of the last decade.

Source: diariodesevilla.es