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Astudillo Collection

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Today we celebrate Spain’s National Day with “Córdoba 19 Exterior de la Catedral” (1892–1898), an albumen photo by Tomás Molina from Astudillo Collection, depicting one of Spain’s most remarkable monuments.

What makes this photograph particularly compelling is that it records the western façade of Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral before the major restoration campaigns that transformed it around the turn of the XX century. The weathered masonry, eroded architectural decoration and irregular surfaces convey the passage of time, while the cobbled roadway and raised walkway along the building preserve evidence of the historic relationship between the monument and the surrounding street. Later interventions altered both the façade and its immediate setting, making early photographs such as this important visual records.

The figures scattered along the wall bring the scene to life. Some kids stand beside the doorways, a man walks away, and even a dog can be seen in the street. Their presence gives us a sense of the scale of the immense structure, but also of its place in everyday life.

The building itself embodies the successive layers of Spanish history. Originally founded as a mosque under the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus and subsequently transformed into a Christian cathedral, it brings together Islamic and Christian architectural traditions in a single monument.

It is therefore not surprising that picturesque images such as this one were sought after by Grand Tour travellers and other visitors, helping shape the image of Spain abroad.

Astudillo Collection includes the work of several photographers who contributed to this visual record of XIX-century Spain, like Charles & Jane Clifford, Jean Laurent, Rafael Garzón in Granada, Emilio Beauchy in Seville or later Hauser y Menet.

Tomás Molina was born in Jaén in 1864, but settled in Córdoba in 1892, taking over the photographic studio previously run by Joaquín Oses in Calle Gondomar. He became one of the city’s leading professional photographers, both for his portraits and his views of monuments. His appointment as photographer to the Spanish Royal Household in 1896 further attests to his professional standing. taken in Mezquita-Catedral De Córdoba - Cordoba, Spain by @astudillocollection

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4 days ago

Astudillo Collecion celebrates “International Day of the Girl Child”, posting “Pokušení” (1970) by Jan Saudek, which was acquired by the Astudillo Collection after being deaccessioned by the Seattle Art Museum.

Established by the United Nations in 2011, the International Day of the Girl Child draws attention to girls’ rights and the obstacles that continue to limit their freedom, safety, education and opportunities. Its purpose is not simply to celebrate girls, but to recognise their right to grow up with dignity, protection and the freedom to shape their own futures.

This year’s theme, “End child marriage and invest in girls’ rights,” was developed through consultations with girls, girls’ organisations and girl-led networks, alongside civil society organisations and United Nations partners. The call for action is urgent: each year, more than 12 million girls—roughly one every three seconds—are married before reaching adulthood. Child marriage can deprive girls of education, compromise their health and safety, and restrict their ability to shape their own futures.

Born in Prague in 1935, Jan Saudek is one of the most internationally recognised Czech photographers. He was awarded the French distinction “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” in 1990. His distinctive photographic work explores human relationships, childhood, vulnerability and the complexities of the human condition through carefully constructed scenes that occupy a singular and influential place in post-war staged photography.

Saudek’s work has entered the collections of major international museums, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago, both of which also have prints of precisely this photo. Other prestigious museum with important holdings of Jan Saudek’s photos include Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Photo Art, Basel or J. Paul Getty Museum.

Saudek’s works have appeared on some album covers: Soul Asylum (Grave Dancers Union), Daniel Lanois (For the Beauty of Wynona) or Welcome to The Beautiful South. taken in United Nations Headquarters by @astudillocollection

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7 days ago

Today we celebrate the 120th birthday of György Kepes, with “Topological Light Form” (1938), one of the large number of Kepes’ photos in Astudillo Collection.

Kepes trained initially as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, but in the late 1920s became increasingly interested in photography, film and the possibilities of modern visual technology.

In 1930 he moved to Berlin, where he began his long collaboration with László Moholy-Nagy, working with him on film, graphic and exhibition design. He subsequently followed Moholy-Nagy to London and, in 1937, to Chicago, at the New Bauhaus, where he directed the Light and Colour Workshop. Although he was not a teacher at the original Bauhaus in Germany, he became one of the important figures in transmitting and developing its ideas in the United States. His teaching placed particular emphasis on photography, optics, light and the “education of vision”, encouraging students to look at the world through new photographic and technological processes.

He experimented with photograms, photomontage, double exposures, micro- and macrophotography and other optical techniques, to reveal forms and relationships that ordinary vision might overlook. “Topological Light Form” offers a striking example. Its close-up composition transforms apparently industrial or mechanical forms into an almost abstract arrangement of cylinders, curves, planes, light and shadow. The photograph is less concerned with describing an object than with exploring how light constructs our perception of form.

László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes are not the only members of the faculty at the New Bauhaus that are part of Astudillo Collection. Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Nathan Lerner or Gordon Coster also extend the excellent representation of one of the most important centres of experimental photography in postwar America in our collection.

In 1944 Kepes published his influential book “Language of Vision”, bringing together ideas about visual perception, photography, design and communication that had developed through his teaching. In 1946 he moved to MIT, where he continued exploring the relationship between art, science and technology. taken in Institute of Design at IIT by @astudillocollection

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12 days ago

Today, as Paris Fashion Week opens, we look back to the golden age of Parisian fashion photography with this elegant “Fashion Photograph” (c. 1938) by Genia Rubin, from the Astudillo Collection.

Genia Rubin (Jewgeni Germanowitsch Rubin) was a photographer born in Kiev in 1906, who became an important figure in Parisian fashion photography of the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1927 he went to Berlin, where he assisted cinematographer Karl W. Freund. In 1929 he moved to Paris, working as a stills photographer at the Pathé film studios as well as a portrait photographer. After returning to Berlin in 1931, he opened his own studio and worked for magazines including Das Magazin and Elegante Welt, where his photography reflected the influence of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit).

In 1935 Rubin returned to Paris, where he worked with the Polish fashion photographer Harry Ossip Meerson at his studio on rue Campagne-Première. When Meerson left for the United States in 1938, Rubin took over the studio. He went on to photograph fashion for magazines including Fémina and Harper’s Bazaar.

Rue Campagne-Première was itself part of the extraordinary artistic and photographic world of interwar Montparnasse. Dora Maar had worked at Meerson’s studio, while Brassaï also used its darkroom. On the same street, Man Ray and Eugène Atget had their studios, placing Rubin within a milieu where fashion, portraiture, commercial photography and the avant-garde frequently overlapped.

Rubin’s fashion photography combined the requirements of magazine photography with a highly distinctive visual language. Dramatic lighting, theatrical poses, elaborate styling and unusual props allowed him to transform the fashion image into something closer to an autonomous photographic composition. His work has consequently been discussed in connection with the Surrealist approach to photography, alongside photographers such as Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld, Dora Maar, Horst P. Horst or Hoyningen-Huene.

In 1947, his work was included in “Le Surréalisme en 1947” at the Galerie Maeght in Paris, organised by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, alongside other artists such as Man Ray, Ernst, Miró, Bellmer or Calder. by @astudillocollection

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18 days ago

Today we mark the 43rd anniversary of the death of photographer Art Sinsabaugh (1924–1983), with this remarkable photograph, “Bottles in Blue” (1957), from the Astudillo Collection.

He was one of the first important photographers to emerge from the extraordinary photography programme at Chicago’s Institute of Design, founded in 1937 by László Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus. He entered the Institute in 1945 and graduated in 1949, studying with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind and, during Moholy-Nagy’s final years, within the tradition he had established there. Sinsabaugh subsequently joined the faculty and taught there until 1959.

This piece is particularly meaningful in our collection, which also includes photographs by Moholy-Nagy, Callahan and Siskind—three figures central to Sinsabaugh’s education.

The photo exemplifies the experimental spirit of the Institute of Design. Rather than treating the bottles as recognisable objects, Sinsabaugh reduces them to circles, ellipses, shadows and repeated forms. Arranged in a dense grid and seen from above, the bottles become an abstract composition, in which repetition and pattern are more important than their original function or identity.

This approach was very much in keeping with the Institute’s philosophy. Under Moholy-Nagy, photography was treated not simply as a means of recording the visible world but as a medium for investigating light, form, materials and perception. Callahan encouraged personal and formal experimentation, while Siskind was a great advocate of finding abstraction in vernacular subjects. Studio experiments, abstraction, unusual exposures and investigations of the photographic process were central to this approach. Here, the choice of high contrast and blue colour also underline that experimental approach.

Sinsabaugh’s early work included reticulated and solarized photographs, techniques that were characteristic of the experimental atmosphere at the Institute. However, his later career would take him in a very different direction: from the late 1950s onwards, he became celebrated for his extraordinarily wide photographs of the American landscape, made with a 12 × 20-inch banquet camera. taken in Institute of Design at IIT by @astudillocollection

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Today we celebrate the 177th birth anniversary of photographer Emilio Beauchy with “Alcázar de Sevilla – Dormitorio de los Reyes Moros” (1870–1880), preserved in Astudillo Collection.

This photograph is part of a larger body of work through which Beauchy systematically recorded the Alcázar. His series included the Patio de las Doncellas, Patio de las Muñecas, Salón de Embajadores, the palace façades and other interiors. Our previous photograph by Beauchy showed us the celebrated courtyard. This one takes us one step further inside.

The title “Dormitorio de los Reyes Moros” (Moorish Kings’ Bedroom) reflects terminology commonly used in the nineteenth century, although it is not a historically accurate indication that Moorish kings occupied the room. The space belongs to the Mudéjar Palace of Pedro I, commissioned by the Christian King Pedro I of Castile in the fourteenth century. Constructed in 1364, the palace was created by Muslim craftsmen from the Iberian Peninsula, including artisans from Granada and Toledo, resulting in an architecture strongly influenced by the traditions of Islamic al-Andalus.

Beauchy’s viewpoint is particularly effective, with dramatic sunlight coming through the horseshoe arches supported by slender marble columns and illuminating the interior. The long exposure required for such a dark setting allows the elaborate decoration to emerge in considerable detail.

The walls combine intricate plasterwork, geometric patterns and richly decorated tilework, while the architecture demonstrates the characteristic Mudéjar combination of Islamic forms with a palace created for a Christian monarch. It is precisely this coexistence of traditions that makes the interiors of the Alcázar so important to the history of Spanish architecture.

Beauchy’s photos captured monuments and urban views as well as everyday life, popular culture, flamenco and bullfighting. They now can be found at Museo del Prado (which included a Beauchy’s photo of the Alcazar in an exhibition earlier this year), Getty Museum, Hispanic Society, or Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The Victoria & Albert Museum (London) also preserves a photograph of this view of the Alcázar. taken in Real Alcázar de Sevilla by @astudillocollection

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Today we celebrate the 121st birthday of Greta Garbo, with this 1928 photograph by Edward Steichen.

We previously published the celebrated close-up in which Garbo pulls her hair back from her face, from the same sitting. Both photographs were produced during a 1928 assignment for Vanity Fair, while Garbo was filming A Woman of Affairs.

By 1928, Garbo was already one of Hollywood’s great stars. Her international career began in Sweden under the direction of Mauritz Stiller in The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924). Her early American filmography includes Torrent (1926) and The Temptress (1926)—both based on texts by Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez—followed by Flesh and the Devil (1927), which consolidated her status as one of MGM’s biggest attractions.

Garbo’s image was inseparable from her extraordinary face. Photography therefore became one of the keys of her success. However, she was famously reluctant to be photographed, and increasingly protective of her privacy as her fame grew. This made Steichen’s 1928 session particularly significant. According to Steichen’s account, he initially made several exposures resembling her usual movie stills, maybe including this one. But he was bothered by the elaborate hairstyle she wore for the film. He remarked on it, and Garbo responded by pushing her hair back from her face, saying, “Oh, this terrible hair.” The previous photograph we posted that captures that moment perfectly.

Garbo retired from the screen after Two-Faced Woman (1941), aged only 36, having made 28 films. She subsequently became increasingly secluded, avoiding publicity and leading a private life. She also became an art collector, acquiring works by artists including Renoir, Bonnard, Kandinsky and Jawlensky.

From 1923, Steichen was chief photographer for the Condé Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair, where he photographed many of the most prominent figures of the period, including Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and other cultural figures such as Brancusi—all represented within the holdings of the Astudillo Collection. He became one of the leading portrait photographers of his time. taken in Holliwood by @astudillocollection

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a month ago

On the International Day of Democracy, we look back to a demonstration in London, with this photograph of the “Oz Trial Demo at Piccadilly Circus,” by Ron Reid, published in the International Times (IT) in 1971.

On 11 August 1971, people gathered in London to protest the conviction of the three Oz magazine editors due to the controversial 1970 issue produced with the participation of school students. We previously featured another connected image: David Nutter’s photograph of the three editors dressed as schoolgirls.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined the demonstration. Lennon took a loudhailer and led the crowd in chanting “Power to the People.” Their involvement in the Oz campaign had already gone beyond the streets: Lennon and Ono had written and recorded “God Save Us” and “Do the Oz,” released as a benefit single. Mick Jagger also wrote “Schoolboy Blues” in response to the case.

There were other artists and cultural figures who supported the Oz editors. David Hockney produced lithographs for a fundraising initiative, while Robert Crumb, Richard Hamilton, Terry Gilliam, Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman, Martin Sharp, David Bailey and others contributed to Ozjets d’Art, a fundraising campaign to which Yoko Ono also contributed.

The IT article that published Reid’s photographs also credited “capn snapz” — Joseph Stevens, using the pseudonym Captain Snaps, as we recently explained in another recent post.

We believe this photograph is particularly fitting today since, particularly in 2026, the United Nations is emphasizing the importance of participation on the International Day of Democracy, with this year’s focus on bringing people together through dialogue and deliberative democratic processes, and on ensuring that every voice counts. Democracy, the UN reminds us, is more than elections: it depends on human rights, meaningful participation and the freedom to express different points of view.

Let’s not forget the connection between a “demo” and democracy. The Greek dēmos means “the people”. Taking its voice into the streets makes a vivid image of what democracy means — and remains as relevant today as it was during the Oz trial and demonstration 55 years ago. taken in Piccadilly Circus London by @astudillocollection

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Today marks Jack Mitchell‘s 101th birth anniversary (September 13, 1925).

He took this portrait of world-class ballerina Carla Fracci on May 1, 1967. That same year Fracci had joined American Ballet Theatre, where he was the official photographer of for a decade.

Mitchell photographed Bracci in a session with Erik Bruhn. They were partners in Bruhn’s “Romeo and Juliet” pas de deux, which was Bruhn’s own version of the balcony scene from Prokofiev’s ballet, and was presented at the New York State Theatre.

Mitchell was one of the most important photographers of dance in the United States. After discovering dance photography through Ted Shawn at Jacob’s Pillow in 1949, he went on to photograph the major American companies and dancers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Mitchell’s interest in dance also brought him into close contact with avant-garde choreographers including Merce Cunningham, and Trisha Brown.

He photographed Cunningham’s “Summerspace”, with sets and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg. Decades later, Mitchell photographed Brown’s “Set and Reset, the celebrated 1983 collaboration between Brown, Rauschenberg and Laurie Anderson. His photographs document one of the key encounters between postmodern dance and the visual arts.

This connection was particularly visible in the exhibition “Robert Rauschenberg: El uso de las imágenes”, held at Fundación Juan March in Madrid in 2025–26, to which Astudillo Collection lent 17 pieces. Mitchell’s work was included in the exhibition, and even some of Rauschenberg’s works on view incorporated photographs made by Mitchell.

At this point in his career, Rauschenberg was increasingly working with photographs he had taken himself. However Jack Mitchell and Aaron Siskind (both in Astudillo Collection) were notable exceptions.

This ability to move between the worlds of dance, theatre and contemporary art is one of the distinctive qualities of Mitchell’s work. He not only recorded performers: his work form a remarkable visual history of the artists, dancers and collaborations that reshaped American culture from the 1950s onwards.

He called his approach to photographing movement “moving stills.” taken in New York State Theatre by @astudillocollection

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Today we mark the 89th anniversary of the conference José Alemany gave on September 10, 1937, at the Union of Artists and Writers of Provincetown.

Jean Albert (1938–1939), a vintage photograph by José Alemany preserved in the Astudillo Collection, belongs to the mature period of his remarkably short but intense photographic career. Its refined simplicity, carefully controlled lighting, and intimate atmosphere exemplify the qualities that distinguish Alemany’s finest portraits.

Born in Blanes, Girona (Spain), in 1895, Alemany emigrated to the United States in 1917.

Although photography had been part of his life from an early age, it was in 1935 that he decided to devote himself seriously to the medium. Most of the surviving photographs date from the period between 1935 and the early 1940s, an extraordinarily productive period.

The Spanish Civil War deeply affected Alemany. His strong moral convictions led him to defend the Republican cause while campaigning for peace and humanitarian action. On September 10, 1937, in Provincetown, he expressed his position in particularly forceful terms:

“What is being fought over in Spain is not whether Spain will be a republic or a monarchy, whether it will be fascist or communist. What is at stake is whether civilization will continue to progress in Spain, in Europe, in America, or whether the result of thousands of years of civilization, the sense of values, the standards of decency, whether all dignity will disappear from the earth.”

The speech was part of a much broader commitment. Alemany gave lectures across the United States, was appointed Pittsburgh chairman of the North American Committee to Aid Spain, wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, organised activities to raise funds for ambulances to be sent to Spain, and published letters and articles in major American newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Galería Guillermo de Osma has played an important role in Alemany’s rediscovery. Their 2010 exhibition “Mujeres” brought together more than 60 vintage portraits of women, and was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by curator and art historian Se taken in Provincetown, Massachussetts by @astudillocollection

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Today, September 8, marks the 730th anniversary of the foundation of Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore.

We mark the occasion with this remarkable early photograph of the Duomo, Fratelli Alinari, no. 1822, Firenze – La Cattedrale (vista dal p. Pretorio), c. 1856.
Taken from the Palazzo Pretorio, today the Museo del Bargello, the photograph looks across the rooftops of Florence towards Brunelleschi’s dome and Giotto’s Campanile. It also offers a remarkable view of the city before the nineteenth-century transformation of the cathedral’s façade.

The foundation stone of the new cathedral was laid on September 8, 1296, replacing the earlier church of Santa Reparata. The date was chosen on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary and is the date officially adopted by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore as the foundation of the institution responsible for the cathedral.

Fratelli Alinari is one of the world’s oldest photographic firms. Initially founded by Leopoldo Alinari in 1852, two years later his brothers Giuseppe and Romualdo joined him, to establish Fratelli Alinari Fotografi Editori, a photographic workshop dedicated initially to the documentation of notable Italian paintings, sculptures, monuments and architecture. They subsequently expanded the scope of their photographic project to include the towns and landscapes of Italy. The studio used the collodion process to produce their negatives.

In 1855, a selection of these images were shown in the Exposition Universelle, Paris, which firmly established them as important European photographers. The following year, they won a gold medal for an exhibition in Brussels. They continued to exhibit their work throughout Europe, including shows in Vienna, Paris, and Milan.

Alinari is today the oldest company in the world in the field of photography. In 2007, the company opened the Museum of Multimedia and History of Photography (MNAF) is open to the public in Florence, Italy. In 2019, the archive of the Alinari brothers was purchased by the Region of Tuscany, who currently manages the Alinari Foundation collection. The brothers’ archives contain 5.5 million photographs. taken in Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence by @astudillocollection

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We mark the 8th anniversary of Ceesepe’s death with “Compañía de Subastas de Maravillas” (1981), a painting that can currently be seen in Madrid at Sala Alcalá 31, as part of the exhibition “Mitologías modernas: Ouka Leele & Co”, conceived around the work of Ouka Leele and the artistic circles that helped define the visual culture of Madrid in the late 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition, on view until October 18, brings together more than one hundred works and has been curated by Julio Pérez Manzanares.

Ceesepe started to work in the mid-1970s, within a new underground culture, then called “El Rrollo” (sic), centred on comics, music, photography and El Rastro (Madrid’s flea market). In 1976, he and photographer Alberto García-Alix founded Cascorro Factory, producing and selling handmade and translated underground comics. Ouka Leele and El Hortelano soon joined their circle. All four are represented in Astudillo Collection.

“Vicios Modernos”, produced under the Cascorro Factory name, brought together Ceesepe’s drawings with García-Alix’s photographs. The original cover of the publication, now part of the Museo Reina Sofía’s collection, can also be seen in the exhibition near our piece.

Ceesepe was also one of the artists who helped create the cultural environment that would become known as La Movida in the early 80s.

Ceesepe’s relationship with Pedro Almodóvar developed within this same milieu. Most notably when he created the poster and opening titles for “Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón” (1980), Almodóvar’s first feature film. The film itself absorbed the visual language of the underground comics in which Ceesepe had been working, making his contribution an especially direct link between the underground culture of the 1970s and the new cinema of the 1980s. In the exhibition, the poster of Almodovar’s “La ley del deseo” (1987) can also be seen beside our piece.

The connections represented in “Mitologías modernas” are also reflected in Astudillo Collection. Alongside Ceesepe, the exhibition includes other artists represented in the collection such as Costus, El Hortelano, Guillermo Pérez Villalta and Alberto García-Alix. taken in Sala Alcalá 31 by @astudillocollection

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