In this case, memory has become light.

For a little more than half a century, Don Vicente Aureliano Tello Tapia (Cuenca, 1932) dedicated himself to capturing images of Cuenca and its surroundings, writing with light a fundamental part of the history of this region.

Agenda of festivities in Cuenca for the holidays in November 2023

The one about Don Vichi is a very powerful local story: it is not only the life story of a man in the service of photojournalism, but also of a character who burst onto the sports scene suddenly in the middle of the last century – standing handstands in pulsation exercises with fellow gymnast Jaime Zeas – on top of the tower of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. conception or the New Cathedral.

A reckless step that was later repeated at fundraising events for the Salesian community in Cuenca, whose high school workshops were left in ashes after a terrible fire. An apparition that was repeated in one day to raise funds for the Sanatorium Mariano Estrella, dedicated to the care of leprosy patients.

If you visit Cuenca, be sure to see this exhibition in the most important archaeological museum in the region.

This man who in his mid-teens allowed himself to be seduced by photography, which at that time was pure black and white alchemy, is recognized as the forerunner of graphic journalism in Azuay and the owner of an impressive photographic heritage that has recently been subjected to the first study. Since he was my father and I was his sixth child, I was a frequent guest of his craft laboratory: a wooden structure inside whose interior I could literally see shades of gray unfolding on a blank paper that froze the beginning forever in a few seconds. of public work, the consequences of plane crashes that gave a bad name to the Cuenca-Quito air route and vice versa, or the heritage destroyed forever by the false concept of modernism. A photographic alchemy that revealed the faces of misery, poor motherhood and alcoholism, stories that shaped the graphic social condemnation of the 60s and 70s.

What is celebrated this November 3 in Ecuador?

All this and more is discussed in the work published today: the biographical and photographic book Camera on the Street, The History of a Humanist, published by the Abya Yala publishing house, and which you can download for free – a gift for students of communication, journalism and photography – from the Polytechnic’s digital repository Salesian.

At the same time, the Pumapungo Museum of the Central Bank of Ecuador mounts an exhibition showing the author’s selection of photographs and recreating his craft activities in the service of journalism. And although I must first apologize for resorting to this space to talk about the blood family, I express the enormous pride that the figure of my father – whose press space in the local newspaper called “Camera on the Street” – and overflowing hope for the work of Malena, the compiler, evokes in me deeds and grandchildren of the character.

Luis Fonsi’s concert in Ecuador for the festivities in Cuenca

If you visit Cuenca, be sure to see this exhibition in the most important archaeological museum in the region. Learn how history is written, with light and passion, and be part of this tribute to those who paved the way. (OR)