More than five thousand images of the photographer, many previously unpublished, can now be viewed free of charge in digital format
The Hispanic Society of America (HSA) has just made public for the first time the more than five thousand photographs that Ruth Matilda Anderson took during the eighteen months she spent in Galicia (1924–1926), many of them previously unpublished. The images—part of a total of 14,000 authored by the Nebraska photographer in Spain and northwestern Africa—can be viewed in their entirety for the first time and in digital format.
Until now—as noted in the work of translator and researcher Alba Rodríguez Saavedra—we only had access to a small portion of Anderson’s documentary collection in Galicia: 500 images, just 10% of the essential work the photographer carried out across the four Galician provinces, reflecting in a close and rigorous manner the reality of early 20th-century Galicia: working-class, hit by poverty, overwhelmingly female, and eminently rural.
“For every man, there are five women,” observed the American photographer at the time. She not only worked in Galicia with her camera, but also learned Galician, read, cited, and translated Rosalía de Castro, and left behind a comprehensive document in her book Gallegan Provinces of Spain: Pontevedra and La Coruña (1939).
Part of Ruth Matilda Anderson’s work first came to light 17 years ago through Afundación. However, based on what Rodríguez Saavedra discovered through her research on the photographer, a very significant portion of that documentary collection was still missing.
As a result of this investigation, Saavedra published Ruth Matilda Anderson: traductora das marxes (Laiovento, 2025), highlighting the importance of the Nebraskan’s legacy not only as a photographer, but also as a translator, essayist, and chronicler of early 1920s Galicia, where women (and children) worked tirelessly inside and outside the home. In a society marked by poverty and emigration, they were single women, “widows of the living,” and “widows of the dead.”
As of yesterday, the HSA’s digital collection allows users to view Ruth Matilda Anderson’s photographs geolocated on a map and categorized by the date they were taken. They feature an extraordinary level of digitization and are open for public viewing, following the principles that guided Archer Milton Huntington in founding the HSA: a public archive and library. Alongside these documents, many other digitized treasures are available, such as sketches by Goya.
The work was carried out by Beatrice Lee Sampedro, recipient of the Leon Levy Foundation fellowship, under the supervision of Patrick Lenaghan, Head Curator of Prints and Photographs.
A true testament to early 20th-century Galicia that conveys a reality never before so extensively photographed and documented. Because to pass down a piece of history is to pass down a treasure.
