With 20 years recently completed, the Foto Colectania Foundation presents for the first time an extensive atlas that radiographs its entire collection, made up of more than 3,000 works by 80 Spanish and Portuguese authors such as Xavier Miserachs, Ramón Masats, Pilar Aymerich, Colita, Joan Colom, Cristina García Rodero, Txema Salvans or Laia Abril. "It's a discovery," values its president, Mario Rotllant, who years ago was determined to compile the trajectories of peninsular photographers from the 50s onwards to make them known beyond their borders and vindicate their worth in a global scene that was forgetting them. "It's not easy to create an international itinerancy of our work, but we are sure that we are going to take it where it deserves," Rotllant remarks, without forgetting to mention great successes such as Joan Colom's exhibition on the faces of the Raval at the Parisian foundation Henri Cartier Bresson or the exhibition on La Movida that reached the Rencontres d'Arles Festival.
The desire to make them international has meant that many of them have rarely shared space at Foto Colectania's headquarters on Paseo Picasso. The exhibition El curso de los acontecimientos (The Course of Events), which can be seen until early June, comes to remedy this pending issue, with a selection of almost 160 photographs by 32 authors made by researcher and professor Carles Guerra. "It has been an immense job and challenge. I have been refining and selecting works, not with a representative spirit, but to put the collection on the couch and let it think for itself," Guerra points out.
The first thing the viewer detects when walking through Foto Colectania is that there is not a single exhibition line, but rather the photographs overlap on different levels, in addition to being divided into multiple sections. "There is not one exhibition, but three or eight, and all of them collaborate," defends its curator. In this expansive approach, the recurring pattern is a large photograph that introduces the sequence, as a symbol of the era to be illustrated and expanded with the works of other authors.
All of this allows the well-known blurry face of Calle Pelayo, Barcelona (1962) by Xavier Miserachs to dialogue with the claustrophobic series Viaje al país de las almas by Jordi Esteva. Or for the portrait of dictator Francisco Franco by Ramon Masats to look at the country he suffocated, portrayed by Fernando Gordillo in different everyday scenes of the town Pedro Bernardo. For those who think that at this point there is no need to show the dictator's face, during a recent visit by a school group to Foto Colectania, when asked who Franco was, they did not know what to say.
These dialogues cover many of the episodes that marked the second half of the 20th century in Spain and Portugal, both neighboring countries marked by the imposition of authoritarian regimes and their subsequent fall and the opening of a new democratic era. A journey that goes from the protests during the dictatorship seen by Manel Armengol and Pilar Aymerich to the death of Franco by Colita and the years of the Transition by the same photographers who portrayed its demonstrations. But it also includes the deindustrialization of Barcelona captured by Manolo Laguillo and Humberto Rivas, or the colossal construction of the Bellvitge blocks by Xavier Ribas. The exhibition even confronts the youth of the 80s by Miguel Trillo with the characteristic attendees of the Sónar festival by Jorge Ribalta.
"It's an exhibition to see, read and move from one side to another," Guerra remarks. Without forgetting the international vocation that motivated the birth of Foto Colectania, the exhibition will be shown in Miami at The Warehouse, belonging to collector and patron of the foundation Martin Z. Margulies, coinciding with the celebration of the contemporary art fair Art Basel. The intention is for it to travel to more countries once it leaves the Barcelona venue, where this year a review of the universe of fashion photographer and filmmaker Sarah Moon will also be on display.