“The Conrado Archives: Santo Domingo 1939-1943” Opens at the Spanish Cultural Center

The Spanish Cultural Center (CCE) has inaugurated the exhibition “Santo Domingo 1939-1940,” displaying the work of famous Austrian photographer Kurt Schnitzer. The photographer, who gained his fame in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo tyranny years, was known as Conrado.

The exhibition, open to the public until December, 2007, is part of the CCE’s collection and is on view as part of the Cultural Cooperation exchange with the institution which is based in Madrid, Spain.

Conrado, who left thousands of negatives in the care of the National Archive of the Nation, was one of the Dominican Republic’s most important documentarian photographers during the years of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s oppressive dictatorship.    

A Bit About Kurt Schnitzer

An Austrian physician, Kurt Schnitzer, known here as Conrado, arrived in Santo Domingo in 1938. His stay in the country coincided with several important events: the repercussions of WWII on the Dominican population and Trujillo’s six trips abroad between 1939 and 1941 when he left two puppet presidents in charge of the government.

Conrado opened his studio on Las Mercedes Street #20 at the beginning of the 1940s after arriving here in exile from his own country.

He landed in Santo Domingo with only his camera and, when he left, that was all he took with him. During that time, Conrado also wrote a descriptive series of documents about occurrences and daily life in the Dominican Republic. He later donated most of his writing to the General Archive of the Nation and gave some of the chapters to the protagonists.