‘We thought it was erotic postcards’: Madrid museum exhibits 1920s couple’s intimate photos

It was only by chance that the artist-curator David Trullo was working on a temporary installation at Madrid’s National Museum of Decorative Arts on the day in 2017 that a sealed case, unopened for 80 years, arrived from the ministry of finance. With no means of tracing the original owner or their family, it had lain in a bureaucratic and financial limbo until sufficient time had passed for its opening to be legally permissible.

The contents of this inadvertent and startling time capsule are now the subject of an exhibition, Álbum de Salón y Alcoba (The Bedroom and Dressing Room Album) installed by Trullo at the museum as part of Photoespaña, the city’s annual celebration of photography.

The case contained domestic items, clothing, shawls, toiletries and a collection of photographs belonging to a couple who had married on 29 July 1922. Little is known about the pair, and for legal reasons even their identities, which Trullo knows, must remain undisclosed. Despite his efforts, he has been unable to find any information about them or their family after the mid-30s.

• The couple’s wedding portrait by Kaulak

“We had an investigation for a year to find them, and they disappeared in 1935. So probably something happened in the Spanish civil war. They left Spain; something terrible happens to them. We don’t know. My theory, which is only a theory, is that in 1936 something happened and they packed everything. Not the very valuable things; it’s more sentimental stuff. They packed it and they placed it somewhere with the idea of coming back and recovering it, probably from a bank.”

Trullo knows at least that they were well off and that the husband was a lawyer. “Photographs of them before getting married,” he says “were taken by Kaulak, who was the best portrait photographer of the time. Everybody wanted a portrait by Kaulak”.

• From Álbum de salón y alcoba

But secreted among the family albums, first communion pictures, and portraits of parents and grandparents was a stash of photographs of a completely different nature. Intrigued by the curiously misshapen framed wedding portrait by Kaulak, Trullo found hidden behind the print a collection of intimate and often graphically explicit pictures of the pair, apparently taken by themselves, dressing up, striking erotic poses, and having plenty of sex. Before being cached, the prints had been carefully wrapped in glassine paper.

Trullo recalls the discovery: “it was a very intense moment, as we thought at the beginning that it was just a collection of erotic postcards, but then we found out it was them, and that we had an extraordinary archive with both sides, their public portraits and the intimate ones.”

As he examined the find, Trullo thought he had uncovered photographs of the wife posing with a third party, a cross dresser, before he slowly realised it was in fact the husband. “He is posing as a transvestite with his wife, and they’re playing together.”

“It’s them, doing their own collection of … we would call it now porn photography, but at the time they called it fotografía galante, which I prefer much more,” says Trullo. “There were many sessions, so it wasn’t just one – they were very into it.”

The contrast between the couple’s posed portraits and their private pictures, and the pains they took to hide their activities, might imply that their interests were illegal or, at the least, unconventional, but Trullo prefers to emphasise how widespread their tastes – in sex, cross dressing and amateur photography – were.

• Above: Concha Piquer. Images of music hall or vaudeville stars in more or less explicit poses were everywhere. Many publications like Muchas Gracias showed underdressed women who were often stage performers. Photograph: Museo Nacional del Teatro

“You could maybe think it was something exceptional, but at the time the market for porn photography was as big as today,” he explains. The Madrid of the 20s and 30s was “as modern as Paris or Berlin or London” and erotica was readily available in numerous magazines sold on the streets. The similarities between the couple’s pictures and the risque pictures of the day suggest an enthusiastic familiarity. “I’m sure they saw these magazines, and you can see the connections – the poses, the attitudes.

“The spread of images of music hall or vaudeville stars in more or less explicit poses was everywhere: postcards, chocolates, cigarettes. And the postcards are the Instagram of the time. Many publications like Muchas Gracias showed underdressed women that were in many cases those same stars, or impersonators. That was a huge influence in the portraiture at the time, and the photographs we found show the influence clearly.”

Similarly, at a time when traditional gender roles were increasingly questioned, cross-dressing was acceptable in certain milieus, not least the hugely popular music hall scene, where the fame of a “transformista” (female impersonator) could sometimes eclipse that of his subject.

“In the context of the time, the 1920s and 1930s are when all the gender roles start to crumble. The girls want to be independent, modern, they cut their hair, they change their attire completely. And the men don’t want to be gentlemen any more. They want to be as modern as the girls.”

• From the Álbum de salón y alcoba

Equally importantly, the technology existed to readily enable amateur practitioners to bypass professional photographers and the services of processing labs. A camera could be bought for $8 (£6) in 1930. “So if we think everybody can have a smartphone now, a lot of people could have a camera like that.”

• Advertisement for the Kodak Petite, 1926

“You don’t need a professional photographer to have a portrait. You can have a camera that is easy, that is affordable, and you can take your own photographs. You pose, you dress up, but the photographs are taken at home. You could place a camera and a timer, and go.”

• From the Álbum de salón y alcoba

Of course, no amount of privacy could guarantee the discretion of those who would process the film and print the pictures, but Trullo believes the couple had found a solution.

“I think he had a darkroom, because with all the documents, some things appear for photography material. So, we’re pretty sure that he did everything himself. And many of the prints had different finishes – overexposed, underexposed, and a lab doesn’t give you that. So he was learning the technique.”

• From the Álbum de salón y alcoba

Trullo’s fascination with the couple’s behaviour around what he describes as “a very private sort of sex game between them” is historical rather than prurient. Many of the photographs on display, and certainly the more graphic examples, are partially obscured by the glassine paper they were originally wrapped in. They are exhibited alongside items suggestive of the era: an appropriately furnished bedroom sets the scene; the new cheap cameras marketed at the burgeoning amateur market are displayed, as are adverts for 1930s erotic photos, and pictures of music hall stars of the day.

That said, he also has one wary eye on the future. “What are our grandchildren going to keep or destroy or show?” he wonders. “Because – think about it – we all have a history and a background.”