The construction of history by the photographic perspective: Twists of Fate, by Paco Roca and the war photographs by Robert Capa and Antoni Campaña

Abstract

The construction of visual imagery in the 19th century since the creation of the photography, takes place in a problem about the memory. As the photographic duality between conserving or building the real, there is one in between of the comics that elaborate this temporal, memorialistic and narrative experience. Therefore, the objective of this study is to understand how the photographic images in Paco Roca’s (2018) comics Twists of Fate dialog with the Spanish Civil War photographs of Robert Capa and Antoni Campaña to construct a social history. In this regard, we will analyze the photos and the comics insofar as they construct narratives based on memories - and reconstruct memory and history based on their images - in the context of the war. For this, it will be necessary to delve into photographic studies as the creator of the real with Rouillé (2009); its records that forms one visual memory of the society with Lowy (2009) and Kossoy (2020); and the functional character of the photographic instrument in the 19th century with Fabris (1991). Thus, this study will contribute to the importance of mnemonic images for the construction of history and the subject-reader in both arts.