Pilar Aymerich
Barcelona, 1943
She studied for five years at the Escola d’Art Dramàtic Adrià Gual, supervised by Ricard Salvat and Maria Aurèlia Campmany. She came into contact with the intellectual world of the time and became friends with Montserrat Roig, with whom she regularly collaborated on various projects. In 1965 she moved to London and two years later to Paris, the residence of her uncle, Xavier Tarragó, who had been a photographer at the Republican Catalan government's Commissary for Propaganda and had a photography studio. She returned to Barcelona in 1968, where she established herself as a professional photographer. She specialises in portraits, social reportage and theatre. She has collaborated in several media publications, including Serra d´Or, Destino, Triunfo, La Calle, Vindicación Feminista, El País, Fotogramas and Qué Leer. She has collaborated in the world of publishing and also audio-visual media. She started working on the Spanish television programme Personatges in 1974, with Montserrat Roig, followed by Crear i viure, Per molts anys and La luna. Her publications include Memòria d’un temps (2004), Resistents, la cultura com a defensa (2008), Viajeras a La Habana (2008), La Nova Cançó, la veu d’un poble (2010) and El goig i la revolta (2012). She has carried out numerous personal projects (notably the audiovisual Cementiris d’ultramar, 2006). She has exhibited in Barcelona (first time in 1977 at the Galeria Eude) and in Havana, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. She was the driving force behind the creation of the Catalan Union of Image and Photography Professionals (UPIFC) and a member of its governing board of directors, as well as the Governing Board of the Association of Catalan Journalists, for two periods (1997-2001 and 2001-2005). The Catalan government awarded her the St George’s Cross in 2005.
Consuelo Bautista
Bogotá, 1957
She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Advertising from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University of Bogotá. She came to Barcelona in 1985 and started contributing to El Món. She has been publishing articles in La Vanguardia since 1988, when the newspaper changed its design and incorporated colour into its cover pages. In 1989 she focused on the neighbourhoods of El Raval, La Mina and La Perona. She has been publishing articles in El País and combining media-commissioned work with personal projects. Because of her interest in the issue of immigration in El Raval, she went back there with La calle Hospital in a project that combined sound and image (the La foto parlante [speaking photo] installation), on display in the La Capella exhibitions room, in Carrer de l'Hospital itself, as part of the Quorum exhibition. She created a new photographic project on the El Raval neighbourhood, between 2007-2008, for the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona, which inspired the exhibition and catalogue entitled Raval. Consuelo Bautista, and in 2013 presented Son Raval at the Arts Santa Mònica. She has held individual exhibitions in Barcelona, Havana, Sabadell, Terrassa and Medellín, and has taken part in several collectives. She has also carried out projects linked to documentary photography in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Montenegro, Israel, Morocco, Senegal, the USA and Canada, and several Spanish cities. She is one of the founders of the Centre de Fotografia Documental de Barcelona. She received the City of Barcelona Plastic Arts Prize (2007) with her photographic project A los invisibles. Her publications include Cuba, Cuba i Cuba (1998), Muertitos (2012) and Raval (2013).
Joana Biarnés
Terrassa, 1935-2018
She was one of the first women to work professionally as a press photographer during the Franco dictatorship. She began in 1953, under the auspices of her father, a press photographer working for newspapers such as El Mundo Deportivo, Club and Vida Deportiva. She studied at the Escola Oficial de Periodisme de Barcelona, where she received the official title of graphic journalist, in September 1956. She worked under that title on several film projects where she was in charge of still photos. She began working in 1963 for the syndicated newspaper Pueblo in Madrid and collaborated from the 1970s on with Blanco y Negro and ABC. Shortly after, she worked for the Heliopress, Contifoto, Cosmopress and Sincro Press International press agencies. She gave up professional photography in 1984 and moved to Eivissa. Years later she opened the restaurant Ca Na Joana, which she ran until 2017. She spent the last years of her life in Viladecavalls, in Vallès Occidental.
Anna Boyé
Barcelona, 1954
She started off in artistic photography through a Joaquim Muntaner scholarship, which enabled her to study with this photographer in 1977. The following year she exhibited her Distrito V photo-reportage, focused on the El Raval neighbourhood, in the Centre Internacional de Fotografia Barcelona. Having started in artistic photography, she soon moved into photo reportage, as this was a medium that enabled her to get close up to people and their various realities. From the 1980s, and for more than 20 years, she collaborated regularly as a freelancer with La Vanguardia’s Magazine. She also worked as a freelancer for the publications Stern, Vsd, Courrier Japon and for the Contact agency. Her most personal projects notably include Viaje a través de la espiritualidad de la mujer en el mundo (1995), Novícies (1999), La mujer y Dios (2004) and the Matriarcats series, which she began in 2006 and took on tour to Guinea Bissau, China, Mexico, Sumatra and other countries in search of communities where women played a key role. She has exhibited at Barcelona City Hall (2004 i 2006), at the Fòrum Universal de les Cultures (2004), at the Palau Robert (2007 i 2010) and in the Centre Internacional de Fotografia Barcelona (1978-1983) at the MACBA (2012).
Milagros Caturla Soriano
Barcelona, 1920 – Sant Cugat del Vallès, 2008
She qualified as a primary school teacher from the Escola de Magisteri de Barcelona in 1946, but never went into the teaching profession. She worked in several jobs: at the Medical Clinic B’s secretary’s office at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona; as a collaborator, at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (1947-1956); as a pieceworker at the Treasury section (1954-1960); at the Patronato Provincial de Apuestas Mutuas Deportivo Benéficas (1960-1967) and at Barcelona Provincial Council’s Staff and Social Security Department (1967-1985). In 1957 she took a course in photography at the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya and created her own laboratory in her home, on Carrer de València, 212. She later went to live in Ciutat Vella. From the 1960's, she put herself forward for and won various local photography awards. One of the first was the Photography Competition organised by the Women’s Branch of the Falange Española y de las JONS (1962), where she received first prize. Her photo archive was broken up. Part of it, consisting of over a hundred photographs, has been in the United States ever since they were purchased by Tom Sponheim from the Mercat de Sant Antoni. Another part has been conserved by her family.
Colita
Isabel Steva Hernández. Barcelona, 1940
She studied in Barcelona and moved to Paris for a year. She learned her craft with Oriol Maspons and Xavier Miserachs, and became a professional photographer through the encouragement of Paco Rebés, whom she considered to be her mentor. In 1962 she worked in the character archive of the film Los Tarantos and moved to Madrid, where she remained for two years to give free rein to her love for flamenco. She took promotion photographs for Antonio Gades and La Chunga. She travelled to the south of Spain and published Luces y sombras del flamenco, which included a text by José Manuel Caballero Bonald (1975). She returned to Barcelona and collaborated in Fotogramas, Tele/eXpres, Mundo Diario, Destino, Interviú, Cuadernos para el Diálogo, La Calle and Bocaccio, among other things. She specialised in portraits and collaborated with the Edigsa record company and with the Nova Cançó [Catalan-language music movement] putting together press and promotional campaigns for Guillermina Motta, Núria Feliu, Ovidi Montllor, Raimon and Joan Manuel Serrat. From 1976 to 1978 she headed the photography department at the magazine Vindicación Feminista. She has had over forty exhibitions. Her first, which was dedicated to Carmen Amaya, was organised in 1964 at the Architects’ Association. In 1971 she had another exhibition, at the Sala Aixelà, made up of a collection of portraits entitled La Gauche qui rit and which was closed by the police the day after its official opening. She has published over thirty books, notably including Antifémina (1977), in collaboration with Maria Aurèlia Capmany. For years Colita researched photographs from before her time and held an exhibition, with Mary Nash, entitled Fotògrafes pioneres a Catalunya [Pioneering photographs in Catalonia] (2005). Colita, perquè sí! (2014) is the title of a solo exhibition, curated by Laura Terré and held at La Pedrera, which looked back over her career. Published and entitled Colita fotografía, Barcelona, the catalogue features the following dedication from the author: «Este libro y mi vida vienen a ser lo mismo» [This book and my life are one and the same].
Silvia T. Colmenero
Oviedo, 1959
She studied at the Escola d’Arts i Oficis d’Oviedo [Oviedo School of Arts and Crafts]. She moved to Madrid, where she studied at Fotocentro from 1977 to 1979, the year in which she relocated to Barcelona. She collaborated in the publications Opinió Socialista and L’Hora, which were linked to the Catalan Socialist Party. She also worked for 4-2-4, a sports publication from the Mundo group, and for Sport. It was not easy for her to work as a photojournalist, given that the sudden appearance of a woman photographer in the world of sport led to a sexist backlash, putting obstacles in the way of her day-to-day work. She shared with Joana Biarnés the feeling of not being accepted in a traditionally male world. She worked in investigative journalism as a contributor to El Noticiero Universal. One of her best-known reports dealt with the rape-seed oil scandal, at a time when it had still not been clearly discussed. She worked as a freelancer for El Periódico and for magazines such as El Far del Llobregat. She has been a regular contributor to El País since 1988, also working freelance, although it was not until 2002 that her employment conditions would be fully recognised. Part of her photographic collection is connected to Baix Llobregat, where she lives. She currently combines work as a photographer, curator and promoter of art.
Carme Garcia Padrosa
Barcelona, 1915-2015
Despite her interest in the world of art, Carme Garcia was unable to study at La Llotja as she had to be put to work in a binder’s workshop at the age of thirteen. She took her first photographs in the 1930s, with a Kodak Baby camera. Hers are pictures of a markedly political nature: crowds of people gathered in Plaça de Sant Jaume, the demonstration of 11 September 1935 and the sculpture of the soldier of the Republican people installed in Plaça de Catalunya, which Kati Horna had already portrayed. Carme Garcia wrote the following on the back of the photograph: «Seven months of war». She returned to photography and some photo montage in the 1950s. In 1956 she took a photography course exclusively for women, at the Group Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya [Catalan Photography Group] and was later one of the driving forces behind the women’s section of that Group, in collaboration with other colleagues on the course. She continued her photographic activity from the 1950s up to shortly before her death. She received numerous prizes in local and international photography competitions. Some of her photographs were published in the Photography Year Book (1973) and in the Soviet Union’s Pravda (29 September 1980). She also had solo exhibitions in Sitges (February 1967) and participated in group exhibitions at the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona and in Badalona. She gave her work to the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona (over eight thousand pictures). More than four hundred positives are conserved at the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya.
Kati Horna
Budapest, 1912 – Ciudad de México, 2000
Born Kati Deutsch, she moved to Berlin at the age of nineteen to study photography and it was there that she became associated with the Bertolt Brecht group. Her artistic training was shaped by ideas from modern photography and she worked for the Dephot agency (Deutscher Photodienst). With the rise of Nazism she returned to Budapest and studied with József Pécsi. In 1933 she emigrated to Paris and worked for the French Agence Photo agency. In January 1937 she was already in Barcelona. In June of that year she produced a reportage on daily life at the Aragón front [during the Spanish Civil War] and the CNT [National Labour Confederation] invited her to collaborate on the anarchist magazine Umbral. Having established herself in Valencia, in 1937 she travelled to Terol, Vélez-Málaga and Almeria and, in 1938, returned to Barcelona. An editor at the magazine Umbral, she also had work published in Mujeres Libres, Libre-Studio, Tierra y Libertad and Tiempos Nuevos. She fled the country with her husband, José Horna, towards the end of the war. He was interned in various refugee camps but she managed to rescue him. The couple emigrated to Mexico, where they were reunited with their friend Chiki Weisz, the husband of the painter Leonora Carrington. They carried out several joint projects with her and Remedios Varo, a painter from Anglès. She continued taking photographs, published in various magazines, for sixty years. She also had an extensive career as a teacher at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (from 1973 to 1999), and at the Ibero-American University. A good part of the photographic series that she took during the Spanish Civil War remained in Spain, where it was probably broken up or destroyed. Even so, according to statements from the author, she took a small tin box with a selection of negatives when she went into exile. For the next forty years she would not use the material, as she was convinced it had to be returned. On 12 May 1983, resident at the time in Mexico, she offered the Spanish State her series of photographs on the Civil War.
Dora Maar
Tours, 1907 – París, 1997
Henriette Théodora Markovitch spent her childhood in Argentina. She was associated with Pierre Kefer from 1930 to 1934 and set up a studio with Brassaï. Excited about technical innovations, she experimented with photo montage and distortions. Her photographs shuttled between avant-garde fashion and street-life, especially in marginalised urban spaces. She was associated with Paris’s avant-garde and surrealist environments and in 1933 travelled to Barcelona, where she went to live in the Hotel Oriente. Interested in Gaudí’s work she photographed Park Güell and the Sagrada Família. She also took photographs of the Mercat de la Boqueria and the shantytown El Somorrostro, Terrassa and Tossa de Mar. The pictures she took of the latter town were published in Barcelona’s Beaux Arts magazine in October 1933. Some of the children she portrayed in her strolls through Barcelona also appeared in several photo montages in Le simulateur, a 1935 work. She met Pablo Picasso in Paris and began helping him create a photographic record of the creative process of Guernica between 11 May and 4 June 1937. In 1939 she exhibited Les Photographies de Dora Maar in Paris and, from then on, also took part in collective and solo exhibitions of both paintings and photographs.
Rosario Martínez Rochina
Bugarra, 1927
Photographer, professional critic and exhibition curator. Originally from Valencia, she moved to Barcelona at the age of seventeen. She studied stenography, typing and accounting at the Acadèmia Cots. She was in charge of accounting for many years at the company Montplet. She joined the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya [Catalan Photography Group] in 1968 and came into contact with the women’s group. She took part in several national and international competitions and won several prizes. She conducted a series of interviews from 1969 to 1971 which she published in the Agrupació’s newsletter. From 1970 to the newspaper’s closure twenty years later, she worked as a photographic critic in the Páginas Fotográficas at El Noticiero Universal. She has been a consultant at the company Negra Industrial since 1973. She also organises and coordinates the Negtor awards. In addition, she is a member of the jury and a critic for several national and international competitions. She has been a regular contributor to the Madrid magazine Diorama since 1984, where she writes on contemporary photography in Catalonia, images and new contributions to the medium. Her publications also include Imagen y Sonido and Arte Fotográfico. She has worked on recovering and cataloguing the works of the photographer Eugeni Forcano and has curated several exhibitions. Her archive has been conserved at the Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona.
Anna Maria Martínez Sagi
Barcelona, 1907 – Santpedor, 2000
A journalist, poet and athlete (she was Spain’s javelin champion in 1931), she was one of the pioneers of women’s sport and photojournalism. She also helped to found the Club Femení i d’Esports de Barcelona [Barcelona Women’s Sports Club] in 1928. She contributed to the most popular graphic publications of the time, Las Noticias, Crónica and Estampa, and was also an editor for the weekly La Rambla. On 30 December 1932 she passed her competitive escribiente-mecanógrafa [typist] exams, which enabled her to join the secretary’s office of Antoni Vilalta, a Barcelona City Councillor, on 10 January 1933. Later on, she worked for the Museu d’Arts Decoratives, in Palau de Pedralbes, where she catalogued part of the collection and, after that, for the Gaceta Municipal. She worked for Barcelona City Council’s press service, which authorised her to enlist for the anti-fascist militia column being led in Zaragoza. She sent her first newspaper features at the beginning of August 1936, accompanied by photos, for publication in El Día Gráfico, La Noche and La Rambla. In addition, she was also a correspondent for the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper and for the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. She went into exile in Paris where she gave birth to a daughter, who died at the age of eight. She moved to the United States in the 1950s and worked at the University of Illinois as a lecturer in French and Spanish. She returned to Spain after Franco died and set up home in Moià. To date, it has not been possible to locate her photographic archive.
Margaret Michaelis
Dzieditz, 1902 – Melbourne, 1985
Born Margarethe Gross, she was educated in Vienna and Berlin. She worked in several photo studios during the 1920s. In 1933 she fled Berlin after Hitler’s rise to power. Jewish and an anarcho-syndicalist, she decided to move to Barcelona, where she set up her own studio, Foto-Studio, at number 36 Carrer del Rosselló, in a modern block of apartments designed by Sert. Afterwards, her studio, now named Foto-Elis, moved to number 218, Avinguda de la República Argentina. In addition to working on social photographic features, she also took architectural photographs. She met several members of the GATCPAC (Catalan Architects and Technicians Group for Progress in Contemporary Architecture) with whom she would establish a close relationship. She took part in the exhibition entitled La Nova Barcelona, organised by GATCPAC in Plaça de Catalunya in 1934 and was also a regular contributor to the magazine AC. Documentos de Actividad Contemporánea, a GATCPAC publication. During the Spanish Civil War she became a photographer working with the Republican Catalan government’s Commissary for Propaganda. She had photographs published in Nova Ibèria, the Commissary’s monthly illustrated magazine and in Butlletí de Sanitat i Assistència Social. She left Barcelona in 1937 and, after travelling through various European cities, she finally settled in Australia, where she continued her activity until the 1950s, when she quit photography because of problems with her eyesight.
Marta Povo
Barcelona, 1951
She studied History and Anthropology at the University of Barcelona. She devoted her life to professional photography, specialising in architecture and landscape. She exhibited prolifically in the 1980s in several galleries in Gavà, Guadalajara, Seville and Sant Boi, and in Barcelona’s Fotomania gallery. She combined photo reportage with more personal series. In 1980 she put together a photographic feature on the Centre de Marginats on Carrer de Wellington de Barcelona, made up of 47 portraits and scenes. Another of her best-known series is the one she made on Barcelona’s traditional crafts (1984). Some of her features were published in Arquitectura balneària a Catalunya (1986), Cases senyorials de Catalunya (1990), La Ciutat de la Sal (1990) and Jardins de Catalunya (1991). Her photographs have been exhibited in several Catalan cities and at The Photographers’ Gallery, in London (1987). She had exhibitions in New York, Geneva and Paris in the 1990s. She has taken part in over a hundred exhibitions.
Guillermina Puig
Sedó, 1952
She became interested in photography and photojournalism at the start of the 1970s. She worked in banking and studied two degrees at the same time: Mathematics at the University of Barcelona and Photography at the Escola de Mitjans Audiovisuals de Barcelona (EMAV). She decided in 1978 to devote herself fully to photojournalism. [Her coverage of] the fire in the Scala nightclub one Sunday in January 1978, opened the door to Edicions 62 which included some of her pictures in L’Anuari Catalunya dia a dia. From then on, she began covering the most notable events in Barcelona and Catalonia. She did commissioned work for the magazines L’Avenç and Saber, and the newspaper Catalunya Express. A photographic piece she did on Barcelona’s Model Prison was published in 1981 in La Vanguardia. After working on the Edicions 62 yearbook, she interviewed the director of La Vanguardia who encouraged her to suggest topics for some of the newspaper’s blank sections. That was how began as a contributor to the paper, whose workforce she joined in 1984. In 1989 she was appointed head of the photography section and became its chief editor in 2000. In 2009 the newspaper restructured its editorial department and made her redundant, along with other colleagues from the photography section. She has held a number of solo exhibitions and has also taken part in group exhibitions.
Marta Sentís
Barcelona, 1949
She was educated in Paris, Barcelona, Oxford and Florence, settling in New York at the start of the 1970s. During the second half of that decade, while continuing her travels, she made several series on Barcelona. In 1978 she put together a series of photographs published in Papel especial, number 0. In 1979 she held an exhibition at Barcelona’s Nikon gallery and another, in the same year, entitled Visió Urbana, at the Saloncito Dos i Una gallery. She has worked as a still photographer for film and television, as a travelling photographer for various UN agencies and as a freelancer for the New York agency Photo Researchers and the Barcelona agency AGE. Despite the diversity of photographic work she has produced, Marta Sentís is regarded as a reporter and what interests her most is publishing graphic news features, preferably in colour (as she declared on 26 September 1988, for an exhibition featuring thirty of her photos at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona). She has exhibited at the Joan Miró Foundation (1983), at the Museo Reina Sofía (1991), at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (1992) and at the Foto Biennale Enschede in the Netherlands (1992). Her publications include Habitacions i migracions (1993), the catalogue for the exhibition of the same title, and her work was made the subject of Román Gubern's book Marta Sentís: la mirada global (2002).
Rosa Szücs del Olmo
Barcelona, 1911-1984
She received her training on courses organised by the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya [Catalan Photography Group] and joined that group's Women’s Section in 1959. She received the extraordinary award for black and white photography at the 8th Concurso Nacional Femenino de Fotografía [Women’s National Photography Competition] (1972). She also received second prize at the Luis Navarro awards and several Mare Nostrum prizes, organised by TVE Miramar. She worked as a laboratory monitor for the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya itself. Rosa Szücs worked as a teacher and passed on her technique and passion for photography to several generations of young women. Roser Martínez Rochina, who was also a photographer and photography critic, described her as a “woman of overwhelming vitality” in an interview published in the Fotogràfica de Catalunya newsletter of April 1970: «Seeing her working with a camera is an absolute gem. Possessed of a restlessness and mental and physical agility that plenty of fifteen-year-old girls would like to have; she would go from one place to another discovering new things, taking shots...». Szücs was well aware of the precarious conditions many women were producing their work in. Her photograph of a woman holding a camera with one hand and a young child in nappies with the other became an entire manifesto, not without irony. Some of her works have been conserved in the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya deposit at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.
Gerda Taro
Stuttgart, 1910 – El Escorial, 1937
Gerta Pohorylle was born to a Jewish family, originally from Poland, and educated in Leipzig. Because of her opposition to Nazism, she went into exile in Paris where she worked in various jobs, including as a chambermaid and a typist; and while working as a secretary at the Alliance-Photo agency, she discovered her interest in photography. It was in the French capital that she also met Endre Ernö Friedmann, another exile, originally from Hungary, thanks to whom she was able to further her knowledge of photographic technique. They worked together and had an affair. It was Gerda who had the idea of signing their works together under the pseudonym of Robert Capa, to avoid having their Jewish surnames made public. In August 1936 they came to Barcelona to cover the Civil War for the magazine Vu. One of Gerda Taro's most iconic news features is the one she made of several conscripts practising how to shoot with a revolver on Barcelona’s beach. She became increasingly involved with Republican Spain. She soon signed her photographs as Taro Photo, and these were published in Ce soir and Vu. Taro went to the front where she made did a reportage on the Battle of Brunete, which was published in Regards a few days before she died during a hazardous retreat caused by a counter-attack from Francoist troops on 26 July 1937. Her photographs had long been attributed to Friedmann, who continued using the name of Robert Capa. Gerda Taro’s true authorship has gradually been discovered over the years. Her collected work can currently be found at the International Center of Photography in New York.
Anna Turbau
Barcelona, 1949
She studied Graphic Design at the Escola Massana and at the Escola Elisava. Her first photo reportage focused on the El Raval neighbourhood in 1971. In 1975 she held an exhibition entitled Fotografías de jazz at Barcelona's Sala Aixelà. This featured several snapshots of sessions of the 9th Barcelona Jazz Festival, whose catalogue Turbau published as Jazz para cinco instrumentos with the promoter and critic Alfredo Papo. That same year she travelled to Galicia and produced a reportage on a series of César Portela-designed houses for Gypsies in O Vao (Pontevedra). She began to have work published in Interviú, the news weekly created in 1976, and also in El Periódico, in 1978. Her work with the latter publication was brief, as they chose to hire another photographer. She was a graphic correspondent for three years (from 1976 to 1979) in Santiago de Compostela for Interviú and Primera Plana, which was published in Barcelona. But she had to leave Galicia incognito because of pressure from the police. When she returned to Barcelona she became a contributor to the magazine Actual. Her publications include Linguas mortas: serial radiofónico (1989) with the journalist and writer, Margarita Ledo Andión. Part of her photographic work from those years was collected for an exhibition entitled Tan lejos, tan cerca held by the Foto Colectania Foundation (2014-2015) and in the book Anna Turbau (Galicia 1975-1979), published in 2017 and featuring a selection of her photographs.
Montserrat Vidal-Barraquer Flaquer
Barcelona, 1902-1992
She was given her first camera at the age of ten. From then on, and up to the age of 90, she never stopped taking photographs. She became a member of the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya in the mid-1950s and joined its women’s section. She had a very close relationship with Carme Garcia, another of group’s prime movers, and the two worked together on numerous occasions on photo reportage projects on the city. She worked in black and white and had a great mastery of light. She constantly played with it. She experimented with colour photography in the 1970s, but did not find it satisfying and soon abandoned the effort. She used to spend her summers in Cambrils, in the family house —Bishop Vidal i Barraquer was her uncle— which is why an important part of her collection consists of landscapes and activities involving people from her town and its vicinity. She was also part of the founding group of the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Cambrils. Her work received official recognition in the UK Photography Year Book (1975-1976). Her photographic archive has been conserved in the Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya and consists of over twenty thousand pictures which she herself had organised and classified before her death.
Pilar Villarrazo
Bilbao, 1946
Born in Bilbao in February 1946, she moved many years later to Barcelona, the city where she currently lives. From 1966 to 1971 she studied Design and Photography in Elisava. Linked to the feminist movement, her photographs appeared in feminist books published in Barcelona, such as La mujer en España, which she made in collaboration with Mireia Bofill, Maria Luisa Fabra, Ana Sallés and Elisa Vallés, and which was published by Ediciones de Cultura Popular in 1967. A photographer of architecture and urbanism, her work was closely linked to the journal Cuadernos de arquitectura where, from 1971, she regularly had extensive features published, focusing on the collective use of urban space. She participated in the book Reflexiones ante el neocapitalismo (1968), in collaboration with Ángel Abad, Jordi Borja and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, among others. She also collaborated on the monographic project La gran Barcelona which was published in the magazine CAU: construcción, arquitectura, urbanismo in 1971. She combines photography with graphic design. She undertook graphic projects for public institutions and social entities, which include "Llibertat, Amnistia, Estatut d’Autonomia" (1976). Some of her photographic work can be found in the Arxiu Històric del Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, and the Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona holds some of her design compositions.
