Virginia Woolf once wrote that “for most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” The work of Belita Gracia remained hidden throughout her life in albums she kept at her home in Barcelona. A few months after turning 101, much of her photography came to light in an exhibition in her hometown.
On the final day of the exhibition, Belita chose to leave — as if she had been waiting to share that visual memory and become eternal.
I met her in 2023. She was 99 years old.
That year, I had set out to bring forgotten women photographers in the Spanish province of León to light. In that search, I was told about Belita Gracia — a daughter, granddaughter, and mother of photographers. In our first conversation, she spoke about the quest for beauty. I asked to see her again, to get to know her better and to explore her archive.
We spent many days together in her home in Barcelona. Our cataloguing process was simple and magical: two cups of coffee, a recorder, whichever album we chose that day, and our conversation.
With a remarkable memory, she recounted every date, every name, every detail behind her photographs. In this way, I discovered all her lives: the four-year-old girl who cried “magic!” when her father, the photographer Pepe Gracia, dipped paper into a liquid and an image appeared; the rock enthusiast; the traveler; the first woman to wear a bikini in León.
In 1955, she married and moved to Ribadeo in the province of Lugo. There, she came into possession of a Kodak Retina 1955 camera, which had been intended for her husband. He did not want it. She kept it.
Her first photos were images of the rooftops she could see from her window — the beauty of rain falling on them. Then came the lighthouse, the fishermen, the estuary at low tide, with women gathering razor clams.
Her first child was born, and she photographed motherhood. Back in León, the streets became the stage for her images. Later came experimentation, nudes, Barcelona and the cultural effervescence of rock. And her collages, which addressed issues such as violence against women.
Belita opened the way for all of us and did something revolutionary: she lived with passion and enthusiasm until her last day. Because, as she said, “You only begin to grow old when you lose your enthusiasm.”
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