Until the 28th of this month, the exhibition Humberto Rivas. La alegre marginación can still be seen at the Imaginart gallery (Diagonal, 432). The exhibition, curated by Isabel Carrero, brings together a series of portraits that Rivas (Buenos Aires, 1937 - Barcelona, 2009) made of some of the protagonists of the most rogue and transgressive scene of Barcelona in the late seventies and early eighties. Transformists and vedettes from Paral·lel, prostitutes and poets from Barrio Chino and Gòtic... In front of the camera of the 1997 National Photography Award winner parade essential characters from a history of dissidence and marginalization ---I fear not written or not well enough written---, such as Violeta la Burra, Mónica del Raval, Carlos Pazos or Johnson.
These were people who lived on the margins and who humbly tried to be happy, as one of the texts accompanying Rivas's portraits rightly states. Contemplating them, I remembered an anecdote that Nazario told me when I interviewed him for my book Homonots, converses amb deu gais que han obert camí (Angle Editorial, 2014): "When Sinde (Ángeles González-Sinde, Minister of Culture of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's socialist government) called me to tell me that they were giving me the Gold Medal of Fine Arts, I said "damn with all the filth and transgressions I've done" and she replied "well, precisely for that reason we are giving it to you, because if it hadn't been for people like you, we wouldn't have managed to normalize many things."
So, I believe that as a society ---especially the LGTBI collective--- we owe something to all those happy marginalized people. Faced with the temptation to overly sugarcoat those dark and exciting times, the father of underground comics also told me a phrase that I find very revealing: "I think that if I was underground it was because at that time you couldn't be anything else."
In front of the camera of the 1997 National Photography Award winner parade essential characters from a history of dissidence and marginalization ---I fear not written or not well enough written---, such as Violeta la Burra, Mónica del Raval, Carlos Pazos or JohnsonForty years later, many of the protagonists of that rogue, transgressive, and marginal Barcelona have disappeared. Also the venues they frequented (Satanassa, Drugstore, Barcelona de Noche…). The progress in the recognition of LGTBI rights since the early eighties is undeniable, although, as Rubén Serrano reminds us inWe are not that well. Being born, growing up, and living outside the norm in Spain (Temas de Hoy, 2020) ---a book with an already eloquent title---, not everything is won yet, not by a long shot.Who would be, nowadays, the heirs of that queer scene that Rivas portrayed with such respect and delicacy?There are hundreds of them, anonymous and also famous like the great Samantha Hudson, a reference for new generations who contributes to broadening society's perspective.
Rivas' documentary work has also had continuity with a new generation of photographers/activists like Isaac Flores (Barcelona, 1994). With a body of work clearly inspired by that transgressive post-Franco Barcelona, this young photographer seeks to give visibility to the part of the collective that, due to their way of dressing, painting themselves or expressing themselves, in short, due to their way of being, continues to live outside the norm and, therefore, suffering incomprehension, marginalization or violence. Last year, Flores won the Joves Fotògraf(e)s de Catalunya Award with Identitats vàlides, a selection of about thirty photographs on the city's queer scene. A work that was exhibited at the Casa de Cultura de Girona, which has passed through several more towns and which, incomprehensibly, has not yet been seen in Barcelona.
Next month, Flores publishes Herencia. Unos años de pandemia, transformismo y disiencia ibérica, a photography book that will see the light thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. It features, among many others, Samantha Hudson, Rodrigo Cuevas or Sergio Satanassa. They are the heirs of those joyful outcasts. We all are a little bit.
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