Spain
Beaded Doorway (1957)
In the 1950’s, Hugh Bell traveled to Spain, first accompanying Richard Leacock and later on his own accord. Bell’s pictures (shot in black-and-white, sepia and color) comprise a comprehensive image of daily life of the local citizenry during the Franco regime. These photographs include children playing alongside a llama, females in the marketplace, a horse-drawn cart, artists working in their studios, a priest conferring with a man by the seaside, and a gathering of policeman by the river. A collection of these photographs were published in an issue of Esquire magazine in 1957 entitled, “Ibiza…Picture Guidebook to the Pearl of the Balearics”.
In Spain, Bell also photographed the celebrity side of the culture; the archive contains numerous photographs of the matador Luis Miguel Dominguin, as well as of visits by writer Ernest Hemingway and actress Lauren Bacall.