Many of the images that come to mind when we think of old Barcelona passed through the hands of the Català family, a family saga formed by the father Pere Català i Pic and his children, Francesc and Pere, three photographers who have managed to sneak into the collective imagination. They would not have been able to do so without the third sister, Maria Àurea, who was the retoucher of their snapshots and whom the exhibition Els Català, fotògrafs d'un segle has wanted to bring to light.
The exhibition, which can be visited until September at the Museu d'Història de Catalunya, gathers through 180 pieces a wide selection of portraits, scenes, and landscapes of an era that is gone and that has managed to survive a little longer through the lenses of the Català family. It does so by downplaying who took each of the snapshots and focusing on everything that unites them and on the act of photographing itself, wanting to help viewers better read any image when the tour ends, talking to them about elements such as space, moment, and protagonists. And some photos, it is not even known who took them.
The history of this family saga begins by chance, says Andreu Català, Francesc's son and curator of the exhibition, while walking among the snapshots. Born into a humble family in Valls, the patriarch, Pere Català i Pic, had to leave school when he was 12 years old and started working as a bellboy at Banco Hispano Americano. One day a camera was raffled off at the branch and he turned out to be the winner. Chance had it that he started to think if he could make a living with that contraption, to which receiving an inheritance from an aunt who lived in the United States contributed.
His first photos date from 1909, with examples such as a portrait of the Valls reservoir. From the photography shop he was able to open in 1915, with the help of the 1,000 pesetas inherited, he began to make a name for himself, which led him to move to Barcelona in 1931, with a trip through Europe in between that made him see that photography had a new field to explore in advertising, an area in which he would become one of the pioneers in the country.
His sons, Francesc and Pere, did not take long to join the family business. The first wanted to do the same as his father, so he sneaked in as a model in one of the advertisements he made, for Cinzano vermouth. The three, as Andreu points out, had to invent "what it was to be a photographer" at a time when this discipline was beginning to earn its place against others, a discussion to which the first Català contributed with a large number of articles.
In this century of changes, the Català immortalized some of its historical milestones. Examples are the zeppelin that flew over Barcelona in the 1929 Universal Exhibition, the first buses in the city ---double-decker and red, like the current London ones---, the Sagrada Família building as Antoni Gaudí left it, or a photograph of Plaza Catalunya in which some signs crossed out by a photographer who anticipates censorship can be seen.
If one piece of the exhibition is linked to history, there is no doubt that it is the poster Aixafem el feixisme, which has crossed borders and generations. Català i Pic was part of the Generalitat's Propaganda Commissariat during the Civil War and was the one who created this first poster, which, moreover, was one of the most widely disseminated. He did it by giving his son Francesc a little money to go for mud, destined to build the swastika that would be stepped on by the foot of a mosso d'esquadra, who held his leg on his musket while the snapshot was taken. The photograph looks so brilliant for something as simple as water being thrown on the ground to achieve that effect, Andreu points out. The poster exhibited in the exhibition is not the original, since none were preserved. The war marked the end of the patriarch's photographic career, who remained hidden for months after its end to avoid reprisals, refusing to go into exile having his mother, wife, and daughter sick.
Despite that portrait so close to history, which ends up constituting it, the vast majority of Català's photos correspond to more common moments that define a time. "They are the chronicle of the 20th century focusing on things that are disappearing," summarizes Andreu. This is seen in the group of women walking along Madrid's Gran Vía, replicated by a group of men on Barcelona's Gran Via ---an unreleased piece included in the exhibition---; the Christmas bonus received by an urban worker loaded with alcohol; the shoeshine boys of La Rambla, or a beach in Zahara de los Atunes that seems to have placed all its members as if they were extras in some movie.
Children play a central role in reflecting what is happening, with their faces fascinated by being captured by a camera or the celebration of the palm, which is accompanied by those in Joan Miró's mural. Not to mention one of the most well-known snapshots for having become the cover of one of the quintessential Barcelona books, Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, which, ironically, was taken in Madrid.
The youngest and until now least known, Pere, focused on capturing all those popular festivals that were in decline at the time, although it may be surprising now. Castells, capgrossos, gegants, the Gràcia festivals, the Patum de Berga, the Fallas de Isil or the Mystery of Elche are some of the protagonists in this exercise of preserving memory and tradition. This need to capture what is leaving had already been started by his father, who photographed at the beginning of the century monuments in ruins that man, time, and oblivion have, very probably, already made disappear.
In the Català family there is also the will to show what is new, with a special focus on architecture, showcasing the then-emerging work of Antonio Moragas, Josep Puig Torné, José Antonio Coderch or Manuel Valls. Without forgetting that the new also ends up being old, like the now lost Seat building, by César Ortiz-Echagüe and Rafael Echaide, also portrayed by Francesc.
Many are also the portraits corresponding to the Català, especially Francesc. Their cameras captured the actors of the Los Vieneses company ---photos that were sold as postcards on La Rambla---, Salvador Dalí, Josep Guinovart, Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tàpies, Joan Miró ---who dressed in harmony and displays his four characteristic colors in the photograph Francesc took of him, to whom he dedicated a painting also exhibited in the show--- or Joan Manuel Serrat.
The personalities portrayed are followed by anonymous people, "treated with the same dignity," Andreu remarks. The bailaora La Chunga; her granddaughter with a rag as a doll and the three chimneys of Poble-sec in the background; a musician who seems about to pull the score from his lungs, or a mother singing to her daughter while spinning ---Pere's favorite, who lamented that a photograph could not be heard---. In the series accompanying La Chunga's granddaughter and in the photo itself, the arrangement is not casual, Andreu explains, and follows the precepts of the Austrian photographer Ernst Hast, whom his father admired, with three upper elements and one lower. Like the rest of the photographs taken by the Català, nothing is casual.