Any approach to history is always interrupted by memory. And the narrative walks the line between the testimonies of memory and the documentary resources of history. There is an inevitable friction between ways of showing without commenting and ways of commenting without showing, as if between what is spoken and what is seen there were not a vital need that affects the very medium of relationship between the human and the barbaric. In cultural narratives, such as literature, for example, the transition between good and evil, or between human and monstrous, lasts for scarcely the span between day and night (e.g., Jekyll and Hyde) or covers the space produced by a reflection in the mirror (e.g., Dorian Gray). Antagonism is the continuous movement of history and, in art, reflection begins with its form, that is, from the end.

Photographic or cinematographic images battle with time — the former because they need to stop time to make it more expansive, in order that it can later be interpreted in every image we look at again; the latter because they encapsulate it and offer it up as a reliable simulator of reality. Claude Lanzman's refusal to show documentary images of the Holocaust does not make the historical event any less true. However, it does, perhaps, push him into a constant dialectical debate about the evaluation of the facts. At the same time, Georges Didi-Huberman's urgency in conferring on the few photographs of the death camps the status of 'witnesses' binds him to a form of documentation that is inevitably fragile and manipulable. In both processes, clearly, there is a prevailingly ethical attitude, at least in the initial intent: to identify an outstanding individual voice that takes into account the collective sphere from which it speaks, and by extension, the historical.

One of the keys to the balance found in the work of Bleda and Rosa is the relationship between image and text. Even when there is no text adjoining the photographs or offering an extended interpretation, textual information always remains a layer within their process and a prominent feature of their research. Each photograph corresponds to a specific space and time. In some way, they represent the memory of the person given his or her opinion, in the historical site of the subject of that opinion. Their series — inter alia, Battlefields, Cities and Origin — focus our attention on a space from the present that enters into dialogue with what we know of its past, another type of attention based on the accumulated information about that place or situation which the artists study and exhibit. There is a sense of stance-taking which, nevertheless, distances itself, driven along by the photographic medium itself, that generates a critical interpretation of the place in relation to the reason for its leading role. Here, we look closely at the photographs, reliving the events of the battle, the archaeological site or the architectural complex, and reading the image as if it were a text, with all its different interpretations.

In other cases, such as the Handbook series of folders, the accompanying texts form an important piece of the whole, completed with a set of nine photographs in each group. When these folders are put on display, stepping from the negotiating table to the exhibition wall, the nine images are arranged in rows and columns of three, like some strategic draughts board. The compendium of texts — the handbook — acts as a skirt beneath this board, but it is also a sort of series of instructions for the visual game formed by the photographs. The fragments of text document the epoch reflected in the series (the early years of the nineteenth century), but they nonetheless continue to be no more than the opinions of interested parties. When Goya depicted this battle of the Franco-Spanish alliance and the subsequent war of independence, he did not distance himself from it; from this position he added the artist's own personality through the drawings, alongside the opinion of the citizen, with such iconic phrases as 'That's how I saw it'.

The pictures in the I Trafalgar folder are mostly maritime scenes that appear to be seeking the limits and avoiding the centre. They depict geographical or architectural features of the French, British and Spanish enclaves that determined Admiral Nelson's ultimate victory in the battle off Cape Trafalgar. The place names are shown in the middle of the bottom margin. The text reproduces the accounts of the battle provided by the French Vice-Admiral Villeneuve — the only one of the leaders of the three fleets to emerge unscathed (Nelson died in the battle and Federico Gravina was seriously wounded) — and by the British and Spanish seconds-in-command. In VIII Cadiz, the relationship between the images and the texts is closer, with the latter acting almost as footnotes to the former. The title of each of the photographs is a date, coinciding with the texts below. From March 1802 through to December 1812, these accounts, taken from a range of bibliographic sources, describe the events that took place at these places in Cadiz. In some of the pictures, we see the entranceways to buildings or palaces, exterior or interior railings, wall panels, a mirror reflecting luxurious antiques, an open display case arrayed with books... As in other photographs by Bleda and Rosa, these scenes often appear to seek a way out, or point to a direction. Diagonals are a common feature of their compositions and there are half-open doors indicating a path that the image, however, does not show. As with history and memory, the direction of the projected gaze and the path of the steps taken do not always coincide.

Álvaro de los Ángeles