From Modernism in Visual Arts to the Spanish Republic

There’s a change in exhibitions at the KBr photography space run by the Mapfre Foundation near the Olympic Port (where they also organize outdoor exhibits). From June 12 to August 31, visitors can see the work of Edward Weston, a pioneer of modernism in American visual arts, and a Catalan photographer, Joan Andreu Puig Farran—who you might be more familiar with than you realize.

This photography center is named after the chemical symbol for potassium bromide (KBr), a compound used in analog photo development to preserve whites and halt the developer’s action.

In this space—paying homage to analog photography even in its name—you’ll find two new examples of the discipline in the form of two exhibitions. The first is dedicated to one of the great photographers in U.S. history: Edward Weston. He lived from 1886 to 1958 and was a leading figure of the movement known as "straight photography," which sought to objectively capture the greatest possible detail in an image, free of interpretive intent. He co-founded Group f/64 with Ansel Adams, a collective devoted to exploring photographic detail.

As you’ll see in this exhibition—organized with support from the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (featuring, for example, a fragment of the 1936 photo Nude)—Weston played a crucial role in establishing photography as an art form and contributed significantly to modernism in the visual arts.

The exhibition is a retrospective that covers the different phases of his career: from his early interest in pictorialism to his embrace of the poetic and speculative power of straight photography. His images are key to understanding the aesthetics and lifestyle that emerged in the U.S. between the two World Wars.

Curated by Sérgio Mah, the exhibit includes photographs and documentary material that illustrate the nature of American modernist photography—an aesthetic counterpoint to the European modernist tradition.

At the same venue and during the same dates, you can also visit Joan Andreu Puig Farran. The Turbulent Decade (1929–1939), a second exhibition focused on a photographer born in Lleida who worked during the Spanish Second Republic for newspapers such as La Humanitat, Esplai, El Matí, L’Opinió, and La Vanguardia. He captured images of the Spanish Civil War and was forced into exile in France, returning in 1945.

In fact, Puig Farran never held a solo exhibition during his lifetime, yet you’ve almost certainly seen his images. After the war, together with photographer Antoni Campañà, he worked in the emerging field of tourism and landscape photography. With his business partner, he created the postcard brand CYP—those postcards you’ve probably seen more than once if you're old enough to remember them.

Curated by Arnau Gonzàlez Vilalta and Antoni Monné Campañà, the exhibition focuses on Puig Farran’s work during the Second Republic, a time of intense social unrest that he documented with his camera. You’ll see original prints from La Vanguardia’s archive, as well as prints made from glass plates preserved by his heirs, and a selection of newspapers in which his photographs were published.

If you're curious to explore the work of two photographers separated by an ocean and by history itself, don’t miss these exhibitions at the KBr photography space of the Mapfre Foundation, featuring Edward Weston and Catalan photographer Joan Andreu Puig Farran—but be sure to check the website for full details beforehand.