A photograph chosen by Carnegie Hall

When Paco Manzano pressed the shutter that January night in 1990 at the Colegio Mayor San Juan Evangelista, Camarón de la Isla had already been living with the illness that would take his life two years later. He was 48 years old. What the lens captured is not an artist posing — it is a man concentrated, still, hands crossed over his knees and rings gleaming on his knuckles, gazing toward some point outside the frame that only he could see.

The San Juan Evangelista was at that time the most important space for university flamenco in Madrid. It was not a tablao or a conventional theatre — it was a college residence where the most demanding flamenco audience in the capital came to listen to pure, uncompromising flamenco. For Camarón to perform there in 1990 was an almost liturgical event.

Paco Manzano portrayed him without artifice. No stage smoke, no theatrical lighting. Just the available light, the grey suit, the curly hair and that expression of someone who carries the weight of the world in their voice. After Camarón’s death in 1992, Carnegie Hall in New York chose one of Manzano’s photographs to illustrate the official tribute published in The New York Times.

This photograph hangs today on the walls of Cardamomo. If you are here it is because you saw it in the room. Now you know what happened that night.