XAVIER MISERACHS

Barcelona, 1937

EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION)

2018

Epileg Imprevist. Fundación Cultural La Pedrera. Barcelona

Costa brava show. La Fabrica. Madrid

2016

Miserachs, Ana Mas Projects, Barcelona.

2015

Festes de Gràcia, Barcelona, 1964.

2008

Galería Hartmann (Barcelona)En clave de mujer49.

2007

Centro Fontana de Oro (Girona)Francesc Català-Roca y Xavier Miserachs. Dos miradas al territorio de la Costa Brava48.

2006

Galería Josef Sudek (Praga)Barcelona. Blanco y Negro47.

2004

Photoespaña 04. Barcelona, con Terré y Masats.44.

2000

Colegio de Periodistas de Cataluña, (Barcelona)Xavier Miserachs, un lujo periodístico46.

1992

Fundación “la Caixa”1 segundo y 25 centésimas. Exposición retrospectiva comisariada por Alain Dupu.

1992

Tiempo de Silencio, Centro de Arte Santa Mónica. Exposición organizada por el Departamento de Cultura de la Generalitat de Cataluña y la Fundación Caixa de Catalunya45.

1991

Grupo AFAL 1956-1991. Escuela de Artes y Oficios de Almería. Exposición colectiva, organizada por la Junta de Andalucía, la Diputación Provincial de Almería y Almediterránea’9245. 

1987

Barcelona Metrópolis. Instalación en la Gran Vía de Barcelona de la exposición conjunta con Colita, Oriol Maspons y Francesc Català-Roca45.

1982

Galería René Metras, Barcelona. Exposición conjunta con Leopoldo Pomés y Francesc Català-Roca. Fotografía catalana en los años 50-6045.

1959

Sala Aixelà, BarcelonaTerré-Miserachs-Masats, dirigida por Josep Maria Casademont.

1957

Agrupación Fotográfica de Cataluña (Barcelona), AFAL (Almería) y Real Sociedad Fotográfica de Madrid: Terré-Miserachs- Masats 44.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017

Insurreccions, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

2001

Temps de Transició, Fundación Telefónica (Madrid).

2000

Introducció a la Història de la fotografia a Catalunya, Museo Nacional de Arte de Catalunya

La generació de l’11 de setembre, Colegio de Periodistas (Barcelona, itinerante).

Llibres, Fotografía-Galería Railowsky (Valencia).

1999

150 anys de fotografia a Espanya, Círculo de Bellas Artes. (Madrid).

Fusta, Galería EGAM (Madrid).

1997

Testimonis, Colegio de Periodistas (Barcelona).

1996

Les fonts de la Memòria, Fundación La Caixa (Barcelona-Madrid, itinerant).

1992

Els drets humans, Amnesty Int M.A.M. Julio González (València).

1991

Quatre adreces, Fotografia Contemp. Espanyola- Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid).

1990

Serigrafies Nocturnes, Daimaru Gallery (Tòquio-Japó).

100 anys fotoperiodisme a Catalunya, Palacio de la Virreina

PICTURE BOOKS

2004

Conversaciones en Madrid y en Cataluña, Salvador Pániker Alemany, Reedición revisada después de la muerte del fotógrafo. Kairós.

1998

Criterio fotográfico, Xavier Miserachs, Libro de divulgación fotográfica. Editorial Omega.

1998

Girona a Quatre Vents, Joan Domènech i Moner. Lunwerg.

1997

Fulls de contacte, Xavier Miserachs Premio Gaziel Memorias del artista. Edicions 62.

1997

L’Empordà: llibre de meravelles, Antoni Puigverd. Edicions 62.

1995

Ciutat Vella. Visions des d’una passió, Joan Barril, Josep Maria Carandell, Josep Cuní, Arcadi Espada, Josep Maria Espinàs, Xavier Febrés, Patrícia Gabancho, Josep Maria Huertas, Josep M. Lladó, Lluís Permanyer, Alfred Rexach y Margarita Rivière. Fotografía en color a cargo de Toni Catany y de Miserachs, Colita, Toni Catany y Leopoldo Pomés Campello. Lunwerg.

1992

El Gran Teatre del Liceu a Sevilla Ramon Pla i Arxé Libro hecho con motivo de la Exposición Universal de Sevilla de 1992. L’Avenç.

1990

Gran Teatre del Liceu, Con fotografías de Ferran Freixa. L’Avenç.

1990

Metros i Metròpolis, Xavier Febrés, Mercè Sala. Diputación de Barcelona.

1988

Les Barcelones del Món, J. Nuñez, Rafael Pradas, Caixa de Barcelona.

1988

Els barcelonins, Oriol Maspons, Ana María Moix, Terenci Moix, Edicions 62.

1987

Passeig de Mar, Xavier Febrés, Passeig de mar: la costa catalana del delta de l’Ebre a Cotlliure. Ed. Plaza y Janés/Diari de Barcelona.

1987

Barcelona a vol d’ocell, Montserrat Roig, Edicions 62.

1985

Catalunya a vol d’ocell, Carles Barral, Josep Maria Ainaud, Edicions 62.

1984

Aprendre a conviure, Josep Maria Espinàs, Caixa de Sabadell.

1982

Catalunya des del mar, Carlos Barral Collección Vida i costums dels catalans. Edicions 62.

1978

Andalucía Barroca, Antonio Bonet Correa. Polígrafa.

1969

Conversaciones en Madrid, Salvador Pániker.

Entrevistas a personajes como Camilo José Cela, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Aranguren, Sáenz de Oiza. Kairós.

1967

El arte prerrománico asturiano, Antonio Bonet Correa, Polígrafa.

1967

Los cachorros, Mario Vargas Llosa, Lumen.

1966

Costa Brava show, Manuel Vázquez y Peter Coughtry, Kairós.

Conversaciones en Cataluña, Salvador Pániker, Entrevistas a Josep Pla, Ana María Matute, José María Gironella, Salvador Espriu, Josep Maria de Porcioles, Antoni Tàpies, Josep Maria Subirachs o Salvador Dalí. Kairós.

1964

Barcelona, blanc i negre y Barcelona, blanc y negro. Josep Maria Espinàs, Aymà.

• MISERACHS BARCELONA
  - XAVIER MISERACHS
  
  
  18 Sep. 2015 to 28 Mar. 2016
  MACBA
  
  

  Miserachs Barcelona presents an exciting journey through time, an adventure in which the phantasmagorical character of the photographs is sometimes pure archaeology and at other times the present day. In the exhibition the images ofBarcelona, blanc i negre come alive, constantly changing like the continual transformative energy of the city and its people. As with the photobook, the exhibition Miserachs Barcelona presents urban experiences that are as fluid and instantaneous as the photos, forever incomplete and imperfect, yet retaining the ephemeral and resisting oblivion.

  In September 1964 the photographer Xavier Miserachs, a native of Barcelona, published his major work, Barcelona, blanc i negre, a photobook bringing together nearly four hundred of his photographs. At the age of only 27, he was already a veteran photographer, a member of the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya (Photographic Association of Catalonia) since 1952, who had exhibited and won prizes as an amateur photographer. From 1961, Miserachs worked professionally in advertising, photojournalism and, above all, street photography, ‘the pleasure of wandering around trying to represent what to me seemed distinctive and significant about the place’.

  Miserachs participated in some exhibitions, but believed the best place for photos was in the pages of magazines and books. He wanted to make ‘a strictly photographic book of free style and content’, composed of images forming a set that can be read and watched like a film or novel. That is a photobook, the model that at that time defined the history of photography, marked by the publication of masterpieces such as Life is Good & Good for You in New York by William Klein (1956) and The Americans by Robert Frank (1958).

  Photobooks construct photography’s own story, distinct from that told by the market and by museums. A story closer to life than to art, where we don’t encounter photos in museums, but in advertisements, commercial brochures, family albums, magazines, photobooks and virtual clouds where computer files are stored. Luckily, as the concept of the artistic constantly changes, the best photobooks are increasingly considered artworks in their own right, for their unique combination of high and low culture, and their ability to build complex narratives in the manner of film or literature.

   

  Barcelona, blanc i negre draws on two models. The first is a travelling exhibition initiated by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, The Family of Man. It was here that Miserachs realised his true vocation and discovered that the photography that is often called ‘humanistic’ and refers to abstract concepts can also serve to ‘tell, communicate, explain and increase the knowledge of others through our own experience’. The second is identified with the urban photobooks of William Klein, whom Miserachs admired for his ‘highly original way of portraying cities by focusing on the signs provided by their people and spaces’. In the pictures that follow ‘the Klein pattern’ (which dominates in Barcelona, blanc i negre) there is no theme, ‘nothing happens, the image seems taken at random’. The photos are not valid in themselves, as individual images, but only work in the context of the book, which demands that the active reader interpret in their own way these texts without words, these visual stories.

  Barcelona, blanc i negre begins with a carefully disordered sequence that bursts into the city one morning. Later, you discover the city through its inhabitants, with stories of work and celebration, newly-arrived migrants and the bourgeoisie of good families, slums, the Gothic quarter and Eixample, shop windows, advertisements and grafitti… And always people in the streets, of all ages and classes.

  The photobook seems to follow a classic maxim, often quoted by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán: ‘The city is its people.’ The architecture is just the scenario where the everyday life of people takes place. Miserachs avoids tourist and historical clichés. He avoids as much as possible the typical motifs, preferring to delve into the theme of modern culture, the urban experience and its space, the city.

  The great narratives of literature, film and photography of the last century are urban, and their heroes are waylaid walkers such as Eugène Atget, the pioneer of street photography, the active equivalent of the flâneur described by Charles Baudelaire and studied by Walter Benjamin. Like ‘the painter of modern life’ of the Parisian poet, Miserachs is a curious passerby, an indefatigable pedestrian who walks the streets, markets and parks, browsing in shop windows and pavement cafes, stopping by the factories at knocking-off time and in station waiting rooms, and who ends the day on the dance floors and in the night bars.

  Photobooks invite us to look and read. To adapt these actions to the museum, the exhibitionMiserachs Barcelona proposes several ways of looking at and reading photos in the art space, the abstract and cold white cube of the museum. On this occasion there are no frames containing photographic prints, the older the better, the conventional format of museum photographic displays. Photography is a mechanical means that has been reproduced in many different media, beginning with the metal plates of the nineteenth-century daguerreotypes and ending, for the time being, with transparencies backlit by today’s technological devices.

  In Miserachs Barcelona, the viewer encounters the photos of Barcelona, blanc i negrearranged in the form of large murals, shop-windows, enlargements and projections. It opens with a twilight panorama, both unreal and documentary, that refers to the distant horizons of the cinema. Next, you enter the city, recreated in a Meccano-like construction that evokes the style of exhibition displays during the years in which Miserachs prepared his photobook. It is a model that began in the lecture halls of the Bauhaus and reached its photographic zenith with the portable structures used for The Family of Man. Later, you can literally walk through the pages of Miserachs’ photobook and the crowded streets and squares of a Barcelona without tourists, thanks to large three-dimensional enlargements that transform the space into a stage design in which the viewer becomes an active participant. A further space is dominated by changing projections, in which the viewer is immersed in a past and present that constantly merge. Finally, Barcelona, blanc i negre is displayed on a screen in full detail. Here we also find copies of the photobook and the meandering itineraries followed by Miserachs during its preparation.

  Horacio Fernández

   

  Production: exhibition organised and produced by the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).
  Curator: Horacio Fernández