España Oculta — Cristina García Rodero, Japan edition, 1994

This rare 1994 Japanese exhibition catalogue brings Cristina García Rodero’s España Oculta to a new cultural context—one that is as devoted to ritual, death, and gesture as the images themselves. Originally published in Spain in the 1980s, España Oculta is Rodero’s landmark photographic survey of traditional religious and pagan festivals across rural Spain—moments where devotion meets delirium, costume meets catharsis. In this edition, produced for the Mitaka City Gallery of Art, her black-and-white photographs retain all their strangeness: a communion girl stands like a spectral icon in a graveyard; bodies blur into procession; time thickens.

Before Rodero reissued the work in a recent, expanded edition, this Japanese catalogue was for many the only way to access the series. It remains an elegant and intimate version of the project—compact, easy to handle, with strong reproductions and thoughtful additions like the map indicating where each image was taken. A quiet gem of cross-cultural publishing, and still one of the most discreetly beautiful ways into one of Spain’s most iconic photobooks.

Technical Sheet
Title: España Oculta
Artist / Author: Cristina García Rodero
Date: 1994
Edition: Japanese exhibition catalogue
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Softcover with dust jacket
Dimensions (cm): approx. 25 × 26
Language: Japanese / Spanish
Publisher / Editor: Mitaka City Gallery of Art, Tokyo
Printer: Uniphoto Press Inc.
Condition: Very Good