The skin of Barcelona

We found the collection in the exhibition hall, but Casa Golferichs has had a workshop space named Francesc Català-Roca for years. It had been a while since I had entered Golferichs, this chalet, half forest cottage, half Addams family castle, of a Gothic modernism without colors by Joan Rubió, but with a tempting crocanti varnish, transformed into a civic center and headquarters of the Pi i Sunyer Foundation. A plaque on the exterior wall recalls how neighbors stopped its sale and demolition to build apartments for Nuñez y Navarro in 1972, demonstrating that not everyone in this city allowed their jewels to be stolen and that, unlike the Sagrada Família, here rationalist bulimia did not achieve its purpose of selling spaces reserved for beauty out of greed. And inside, as we said, Català-Roca and the skin of Barcelona. We find ourselves in a kind of trench of good taste.

Arranged in a horizontal strip that surrounds the entire room, the exhibition La pell de Barcelona, which can be visited until September 14, aligns photographs that will bounce around in some people's brains because they are so iconic, and will simply awaken the soul in others. Tombs engraved on the floor of the Cathedral, or of Santa María del Mar, those vessels of a tailor or a merchant y dels seus that are pure skin of a city with latent magma. Backlights of grilles over modernist flowers, the deep wounds of bullets on the wall of Sant Felip Neri, textures and more textures that move away from the human portrait and transform the city of Barcelona into a character with wrinkles, makeup, accessories, earrings, orifices.

The Pantocrator of Taüll, exhibited today in the MNAC, condemned to its nose and round cheeks, the Mammoth of the Ciutadella, the geese that walk barefoot through the cloister, the fashion advertisements of the 80s and 90s, the main masts of the sailboats docked in Port Vell doing a belly dance on the reflection of the water, the spiral staircase (or the snail-staircase) of the Sagrada Família temple, the underwater ceiling of the interiors of La Pedrera, the rose windows of the churches compared to sardine trays. "Among the things I still want to do is a photography book that I would like to title La pell de Barcelona and that would show the passage of time through the facades of the city," the artist said. Said and done.

"Among the things I still want to do, there is a photography book that I would like to title La pell de Barcelona and that would show the passage of time through the facades of the city"

If the book was recovered by his son Andreu, the exhibition enhances the idea and demonstrates that the photographer was right in thinking that archiving, saving, letting a photograph ferment very often gives it a value that at first might not be seen. It is not, then, that we are looking at images from the past: we are receiving postcards sent from the past to the future, intended to be seen now, revealed now, with the value and splendor that the passage of time provides.

Thus, the statue of Columbus points to its neighboring mountain with a castle, the flowered frame of a door is reflected in the growth of a weed between two urban stones, the ironwork of Estación de França intertwines eiffel-like with that of the Born market, Miró's colored mural in Pla de l'Ós contrasts with the gray cobblestones of an alley in Ciutat Vella, and Gaudí, everywhere, makes trencadís and wrought iron seem like organic creatures rather than the work of any man.

Buy the book, visit the exhibition, or do both. This Barcelona obsessive provokes a visual reading, a unique visual caress for the epidermis and essence of a city concerned about losing its essence. Have tourists go see it, if they want to understand it beyond just visiting and taking photos. Perhaps they will learn, in passing, how to make a photo say more than potato or more than cheese. The trick is to find a photographer who, besides putting his eye where he shoots, risks his skin with every shot.