The aim of this topic is to recognise the extensive volume of documentation conserved in the municipal archives of the district associated with the memory of work in Barcelona. Based on a selection of very diverse types of material taken from its photograph collection, what stands out is an extensive testimony of working life in the city which now allows an analysis of how working in Barcelona from the end of the 19th century and throughout 20th century has been represented photographically.

On the one hand, we have an official view in which the person taking the photograph worked on behalf of the owners of the factories and companies in the creation of an ideal collective imagination of productivity, from nearly the end of the 19th century until the mid-20th century. And on the other, there is a more informal and everyday image in which the workers feel like participants of the photographic event with the appearance towards 1950s of domestic cameras which allow there to be a self representation of the working life. The photograph is a fundamental piece in the image of work in Barcelona and aids in understanding the fights, claims and everyday working life in the city.