I used to drive every year to Cartagena to attend the guitar maker’s exhibition which was organized as part of the Semana de la Guitarra festival at the conservatory there. It was an opportunity to show my guitars to students and teachers and to have them played on a stage and compared with other makers’ work. When my son was born I stopped going although by that time I had a decent waiting list for my instruments and had stopped travelling to show my instruments. I enjoyed those exhibitions and I heard some great music, learned a lot about my instruments and the players needs and met some wonderful people. One of those was María Isabel López Gonzálvez, a young student of photography who was finishing her degree and had thought of a subject for her end of degree monograph. She had been asking the guitar makers one by one if they would mind if she spent some time taking photos of their work. She was very clear that she wanted to be a fly on the wall and not stage any shots. Of course this meant that in order get photos of many different processes the project would have to be stretched out over quite a long period. Perhaps you can imagine that the makers were not interested in something that would only interrupt their concentration and their work and would offer no benefits for themselves.
I think it was in 2002 that she approached me with this idea. Her interest in guitar making was unusual for someone who neither played the guitar nor worked with wood and I was carried away by her enthusiasm. María had to travel for three hours for each session and was still studying at the time and I had my limitations as well so it took a long time to get enough images to satisfy her. The final project consisted of 100 images ranging from 30 X 45 cm up to 70 X 100 cm which she would then have to present to the committee which would evaluate her work. In the end, although she did develop the images at full size the presentation was made in the form of a book which was put together just for the occasion. She printed 10 copies, one for herself, one for each member of the jury, one for myself and one for my mother (María was 18 and just the sweetest person).
When I saw the book for the first time I immediately thought that it should be published and in time we got that done. The current edition is actually the second try, the first one was larger and the binding started falling apart very soon. 
This edition was finally presented at the Cartagena festival of 2006 along with some of the full-size photos and a few short pieces played by Daniel Vissi on one of my instruments. The book is sold by Strings by Mail and also to a few shops in Spain and in Germany at Dick fine tools in their instrument making section. Don’t let that give anyone the wrong idea, this is not a method for building a guitar. It shows quite a few of the stages and I believe there are many photos which are interesting to builders but it is primarily a beautifully shot photographic essay and nothing more. Each photograph is accompanied by a short caption in Spanish and English.
The full exhibition only appeared once and was organized by a bank and the town council where the María lives. Get the book for a reduced price now at Strings by Mail
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