If you are in Barcelona this March and you are interested in: portrait photography, urban photography, nature photography, black and with, analog photography and meeting emerging or established artists this is the place to be for you.
As we are photography lovers we will start with a must to see photo exhibition that is on show till May 19th on MAPFRE Foundation in Barcelona.
An American photographer, Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was a central figure in and important bridge between the photographic circles and cultural hubs of Paris and New York.
She is best known for her portraits of between-the-wars, 20th century cultural figures, New York architecture photography (´30s) and science interpretation (´40s).
In this complex collection you will have the opportunity to see a sample of all of her work stages.
First we step is in to her Portrait period. In 1921 she left America for Paris where she continues her study of sculpture there. In Paris, she became Man Ray’s photographic assistant. There, she saw Eugène Atget’s photographs. Her first solo show was at the gallery Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris in 1926 and featured portraits of the Parisian avant-garde, a practice she continued throughout her years in Paris.
We fell in love at the texture that she gives to her portraits. When we looked closely appeared the sensation that the figures are coming to lives.
You have know the opportunity to see in Barcelona an important sample of her Changing New York project. Your eye can capture her interest in skyscrapers, train stations and working class neighborhoods.
Arriving back in New York in 1929, Abbott was struck by the rapid transformation of the built landscape. On the eve of the Great Depression she began a series of documentary photographs of the city that, with the support of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939. During 1929-38, her photography documented urban material culture and the build environment of New York; took photos of the old before that was torn down and after when the new construction replace it.
We fell in love with the light she captures in her urban photography. We travel into the time and we imagined we are under those bridges or in that train station.
And on the last part of her collection in Barcelona you meet her work that combine the photography with the science. The science images offer art historians a chance to see the body of Abbott’s work afresh.
Abbott’s photograph of a bouncing ball used to depict gravity appeared on the cover.
As Abbott explained: ‘The science made its own design, but just patterns and just beautiful design wasn’t it at all. The principle had to come through first and foremost’. She collaborative nature of this ‘big’ photography agreed with Abbott and she called her time working on these photographs as ‘the happiest years of my life’ (Abbott & Mitchell, 1979).
We felt in love with her sensibility that she transmits; everything is organic, equilibrated and natural.
We recommend seeing this exhibition in Barcelona as you will have the opportunity to see a good view through Abbott´s carrier, all photos are black and with.
Also our photographer Andrei Farcasanu is exhibiting in Valid Foto gallery this month. If you are in Barcelona go and see his works part of the Llama exhibition.
You will discover a selection of his most famous projects “Timeless Intervention” and “The quiet sense of Nature” exhibited there. He claim that Andrei Tarkovsky quote “A poet is someone who uses an image to express a universal message.” it is representative for his work.
Timeless Interventions is a limited series of photographic installations, which incite an interruption in consciousness and a whispered memory of the future. Imperishable in context and material in form, this series of lith printed analogue photographs, surfaces from the depths of the ethereal. With images small enough to be held in the intimate space of a hand, a quiet universe where a story unfolds, these works are vastly small, and conjure precious manifestations of the sublime.
Here is a constructed iconography, with complex and archetypal elements of our natural world, performing as an immutable testament to the underlying sensibilities infused within it. Each mini-sequence emerges as a collection of phrases, reordered and disseminated in a parlance between the artist, chance, and a cognizant intervention of movement and tethering, which buoys in and out of our perception.
Until April 9th you can see it on Valid Foto Gallery. At it is in a gallery is no fee admission and if you are interested to see or ask more about Andrei fell free to ask the personal gallery. Have in account that the “siesta” hour is between 14:00 and 17:00.
Up Coming Photo Exhibitions on March 23th at LaVirreina: Photography from People of the 20th Century (1st flat) and Womankind (Miserachs space).
Last Friday, march 22, we went on the great opening on La Virreina Centre De La Imatge where we had the pleasure to see WOMANKIND exhibition and PHOTOGRAPHS FROM “PEOPLE OF THE 20TH CENTURY”
WOMANKIND shows us the image of the woman in photography. Maria Maria Acha-Kutschher (Lima 1968) gives a new meaning to those images that, during the time, have constructed a discriminatory icon of women since the invention of photography in that paternalistic ambient. This exhibition is a long-term project that brings together various series of works under the title Womankind (2010-2015).
Her working method consists of signifying several archive images from different sources and then introducing subtle formal changes into these.
On the exhibition you can find eighteen photographic collages and the photo installation 365 Days which design a sequence of images in the form of a yearlong diary.
Les Spectaulaires, the colorful collages, portrait woman as “abnormal” by the clinical system at the time, seen as monsters and displayed in circus shows (in which the freak show was one of their overriding episodes). These women exemplify the processes of persecution based on difference and therapize.
On the other hand we have a characterization of the “feminine universe” where the beauty and the elegance are principal roles, where the woman is in a perpetual state of unproductive daydreams.
The exhibition is Free of charge
Free guided tours: Tuesday at 6 PM, Saturday and Sunday at noon
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM “PEOPLE OF THE 20TH CENTURY” held in collaboration with the August Sander Archiv belonging to Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne. This is the most comprehensive exhibition ever staged in Spain on August Sander´s project of the same name (another reason for must to see this in Barcelona).
In this photo exhibition Sander decide to include in his series “Studies- The Human Being”, in addition to the 187 photos that regularly show, some photos dedicated to details of his models gestures, looks, postures and especially to hands. That has rarely been presented in international museum´s context until today.
August Sander (17 November 1876 – 20 April 1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer, occupies an absolutely tutelary position in the history of photography.
People of the 20th Century is his most legendary project, a huge archive of professional and topological portraits that reflect the industrial German society from 1910 to 1950.
In La Virreina Centre de la Imagea you can see the rural but also the urban atmosphere, the women portrait in her family stereotype and also the women/ man roll in the industrial times (factory workers, bakers or weaving, laundrywoman).
Free entrance
Free guided tours: Tuesday at 6 PM, Saturday and Sunday at noon
Guided tours by curator (Valentin Roma): April 25th, May 16 th, June 13th at 6 PM
