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I joined the Museum in 1953 and the Laboratory must’ve been operating for at least five years by then. I learned photography with my father, although later on I took qualifications at different centres and I became a more serious photographer. We were inside the Museum at seven in the morning and we would indicate the halls we were going to be in, because, naturally, there was a guard inside. From seven until nine. Then the Museum opened at nine in the morning. We were in the halls taking photographs of the paintings we needed. The ones we’d yet to photograph or the ones they’d asked us to take. The paintings themselves were placed alongside a window so that the reflection of the window itself would serve as a source of lighting. It was all very hand-crafted.
When the Museum opened and members of the public began to enter, we went to the Laboratory to process all of our material. We developed our film, made copies of the photos that had been commissioned from us or simply filed them away. Then we went for lunch. We’d return for a while in the afternoon and we’d stay as long as we could keep going or until we’d finished the work. We worked quite a few hours.
Being on your own in the Museum at night: that was the most extraordinary thing you can imagine! Later on, things changed. Especially when the Photography Laboratory disappeared from the residential pavilion. So we could no longer process the photos. Apart from the fact that we had an enormous amount of work to do, external specialised photography labs had been set up for this purpose.
He joined the Museo del Prado as an art photographer, working there for four decades. He is the son of David Manso, the Museum's first police officer and also its first photographer.
Interview recorded on May 10, 2015
