The photographic exhibition Egypt 1909: The journey of the Amatllers to the land of the pharaohs collects the experiences of the Amatller family as well as the pharaonic monuments and the customs of the people of the time.
The exhibition is complemented by illustrated magazines from the Baix Ebre Regional Archive and can be visited from 3 to 30 September at the Reials Col·legis.
Last Friday, September 3, and kicking off the Terres Travel Festival 2021, the exhibition Egypt 1909: The Journey of the Amatllers to the Land of the Pharaohs was inaugurated, a collection of snapshots of the crossing of the Amatller family for Egypt and Sudan. An exhibition that arrives in Tortosa with the help of B the travel brand Xperience and with the collaboration of the Fundació Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic.
The photographic exhibition covers the journey that the chocolate businessman, Antoni Ametller, made in 1909, accompanied by his daughter Teresa, his friend Josep Garí, his daughter Mercedes, and the maid and trusted person of the family, Justa Sanz Sanjuan. This is a selection of snapshots that collect the experience of the Amatllers for 6 weeks in these 2 countries of the African continent.
The uniqueness of the exhibition lies not only in the spectacular nature of a trip of this nature in the early twentieth century, but above all in the amount of information about the journey that has come to date. The Fundació Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic, created by his daughter, preserves the two hundred negatives that the businessman made during this trip. The snapshots capture the experiences of the Amatllers during the voyage, as well as the monuments and pharaonic architecture, and the customs of the people of the time, in what they described as a “journey of visions and charms”.
The exhibition stops in Tortosa after having been exhibited only in Madrid and Barcelona and this time, in the capital of the Baix Ebre, will be complemented with copies of illustrated magazines from the time of the Historical Archive Baix Ebre region. A documentation from the Historical Library of the Archive that aims to contextualize the exhibition and document a period that aroused great interest in the West, as exemplified by the 8 selected engravings from Egypt.
The exhibition can be visited from 3 to 30 September at the headquarters of the Baix Ebre Regional Historical Archive, in the Royal Schools of Tortosa. Coinciding with the opening, a round table was held to open the exhibition in which Christina Guldager Christiansen, head of the Digital Department of the Amatller Institute of Hispanic Art, Santiago Alcolea Blanch, director of the Amatller Institute, spoke. d’Art Hispànic and Albert Curto, director of the Baix Ebre Regional Historical Archive.
This event is the first of the twenty film sessions, debates and talks scheduled for the 5th edition of the Terres Travel Festival, which has Tortosa as its headquarters, will be held from 3 to 11 September, with the presence of directors, producers, film and tourism professionals from around the world.