Arthur Ross Gallery presents The Postigo Express: Documenting the Basque Conflict in San Sebastián

[Content note: this review contains language describing photos of murder victims.]

Postigo in Philadelphia

Leaving his native San Sebastián in the 1960s to escape Francisco Franco’s regime, Postigo came to Philadelphia. Here, he married, started a family, and in 1973, earned a degree in international relations at Penn.

Photography was then his hobby, and among his subjects were Vietnam War-era campus protests, foreshadowing what he later encountered in a larger, more violent form in Spain. Postigo and his wife Vicki returned with their young family in 1977, after Franco had died and Spain was on the verge of becoming a constitutional democracy. The Basque region was to be a semi-autonomous region of Spain.

“Everywhere in a very short time”

This Arthur Ross show coincides with the premiere of The Postigo Express (2025), a documentary film by Peter Decherney, Penn professor of cinema and media studies. The exhibition, the first showing of Postigo’s work in the United States, was curated by Decherney and Libby Paquette, Postigo’s granddaughter and a Penn undergraduate, who brought her grandfather’s body of work to Decherney’s attention.

The film, which plays in the gallery, follows Postigo as he describes the stories behind some of the 70,000 images he captured for El Diorio Basque, the daily newspaper where he worked for 26 years. Decherney found his title in the photographer’s nickname, which refers to his speed in covering multiple assignments and breaking news with the help of a motorbike. “I was everywhere in a very short time,” he told Decherney.

A ribbon of about 70 prints, arranged in two horizontal rows, circle the gallery. The pictures are identified only by the date on which they were published. Details are provided in a gallery booklet.

Postigo covered all sorts of news. His first published photograph, September 17, 1977, depicts actors Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher promoting Star Wars at a press conference for the San Sebastián Festival de Cine.

As San Sebastián is a port city, many images involve fishing and boating, and these are some of Postigo’s most timeless pictures. Two examples: Fishermen busily unloading the anchovy catch (May 1978), and a regiment of docked rowboats, iced in a surprise snowfall (January 1985).

“An artisanal job”

Crouching on the Pasaies dock in January 1980, Postigo artfully showed the effect of European Union regulations on the fleet. A metal anchoring cleat dominates the foreground, with thick tethering lines fanning up to a string of idle boats. The black-and-white picture is a study in texture: weathered hulls, the dock’s washboard cement, and strands of a frayed line that mirror the rippling water. Today, Postigo continues to photograph San Sebastián’s waterfront: “I love the contrast between the sun, the sea.”

Most images were shot on black-and-white film, a necessity of print technology during Postigo’s career. In a November gallery talk with Decherney, he commented on the weight of equipment he once carried, and remembered the pressure of developing film on deadline, of being in the darkroom and knowing that anxious editors and pressmen were on the other side of the door. “Photojournalism was an artisanal job,” he said. “You have to see what’s going on to do your job, to bring the photos to the newspaper.” Often, what Postigo saw was horrifying.

Documenting violence

In Franco’s wake, the Basque region was roiled with violence. Franco’s victims and supporters lived alongside one another. Pro-Basque groups seeking total separation from Spain pressed their case with armed clashes, bombings, and assassinations.

Postigo captured much of it in real time, reaching still-active crime scenes to photograph the human cost of violence. One image depicts a recently executed janitor on a tile floor, a Franco supporter with arms outstretched, his white shirt improbably clean.

It wasn’t unusual for Postigo to recognize the bodies he photographed—people he’d recently spoken with, or knew from his rounds. “You take the shot, and then think, ‘Whoa. What have I seen?’” Though objective as he worked, Postigo said he never became indifferent to what was in the frame. Violent images comprise a significant portion of the exhibit. While difficult to view, they were chosen because, as Postigo explained, “These were stories that were very impactful for me.”

Much violence in northern Spain and France was perpetrated by ETA, a pro-Basque nationalist group that evolved from cultural advocacy to armed terror. ETA, a Spanish acronym for Basque homeland and liberty, was active through the early 2010s, disbanding in 2018.

Postigo recorded much of ETA’s corrosive legacy. In the Basque town of Rentería in April 1980, an off-duty police officer was assassinated on a city bus. Another officer on the same bus killed the attacker. Arriving quickly, Postigo photographed both men where they’d fallen. The assassin, appearing to have been shot from behind, is near the front door. Shoeless, his feet hang over the stairwell, ankles crossed as though napping. However, there’s no mistaking what’s happened to the policeman: he’s crumpled beneath two rows of seats, with blood everywhere.

Still making pictures

In October 1977, Postigo was at a Hermani cemetery for a memorial honoring Spanish Civil War dead. A large crowd of families and friends fill a curved outdoor staircase, their presence a demand for justice and reparations for the innocent. They appear to be waiting for a ceremony to begin. They gaze in different directions, patient, their numbers attesting to the event’s significance.

Working in the orbit of violence occasionally endangered Postigo. He was arrested by both Spanish and French police, and once while pursuing a police vehicle, was mistaken for a rioter and shot in the shoulder with a rubber bullet. Postigo retired from El Diorio Basque in 2003. “I loved my job,” he said, “but like anything else, it had a term.”

But Postigo still makes pictures, turning his lens on subjects that don’t require him to steel himself against shock: the sun, the water, and the people of his hometown.