From July 7th to October 16th, the Casa África headquarters in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Alfonso XIII, 5) will host the exhibition “Guardianes de la Memporia” (“Guardians of Memory”), which recovers the archives of both renowned and unknown photographers from the Senegalese city of Saint-Louis, considered the cradle of African photography.
The opening will take place on July 7th at 7:30 pm. In addition, at 6 pm, as an inaugural event, there will be a lecture by two of the photographers participating in the exhibition: Idrissa Sell and Djibril Ciss. The exhibition can be visited from Monday to Friday from 9 am to 6 pm. Admission is free. For guided group tours, please write to cultura@casafrica.es
The exhibition offers a chronological journey through the works of portraitists, reporters, and amateur photographers of the 20th century. Most of the images are previously unpublished and have remained hidden among the pages of old albums or in rusted tin boxes for decades, exposed to heat and humidity, condemned to oblivion and, in many cases, threatened by irreversible deterioration.
This exhibition, curated by Marta Moreiras, is the result of a training course on the conservation, digitization, and documentation of historical photographs organized by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the Senegalese Center for Research and Documentation (CRDS ex-IFAN), within the framework of the ACERCA Program for the professionalization of cultural actors.
The exhibition, featuring 111 images by eleven photographers, brings together a selection of recovered photographs that document daily life in Saint-Louis over a century.