The exhibition features 70 photographs showing, for the first time, a visual chronicle of Barcelona’s modern images through the eyes of 21 women photographers, often forgotten and little acknowledged in the course of history.
Having premiered in 2021 at the Born CCM and now showing at the Fabra i Coats. Centre d’Art Contemporani, the exhibition is part of the International Women’s Day celebration events. It aims to reclaim the role of several women pioneers in the world of photography, who put Barcelona at the centre of their creative works and thereby built up a feminist narrative and imagery of the city between the 1930s and 1990s.
The exhibition is presenting images from the following women photographers: Pilar Aymerich, Consuelo Bautista, Joana Biarnés, Anna Boyé, Milagros Caturla Soriano, Colita, Silvia T. Colmenero, Carme Garcia Padrosa, Kati Horna, Dora Maar, Rosario Martínez Rochina, Anna Maria Martínez Sagi, Margaret Michaelis, 2 Marta Povo, Guillermina Puig, Marta Sentís, Rosa Szücs del Olmo, Gerda Taro, Anna Turbau, Montserrat Vidal i Barraquer and Pilar Villarrazo.
The photographs are divided up into ‘three periods: the 1930s, the 1940s to the 1970s and up to the 1990s.
Barcelona goes international (1930s)
Women photographers hailing from other European countries came to Barcelona in the 1930s fleeing the rise in Nazism. Margaret Michaelis, Dora Maar and, from 1936 onwards, Gerda Taro and Kati Horna, who captured a city at war. And Anna Maria Martínez Sagi too, who worked as a war correspondent on the Aragonese front.
From the roof terrace (1940s to 1970s)
The first few years of the Franco dictatorship saw women photographers spending their time on roof terraces, used as observatories, essential local-community centres, and in kitchens, turned into darkrooms for a few hours. Creation of the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya feminist group. Carme Garcia, Montserrat Vidal-Barraquer i Flaquer, Milagros Caturla, Rosa Szücs and Rosario Martínez Rochina were just a few of the members. And Joana Biarnés is one of the first women photographers to work for a newspaper without interruption.
By the street (1970s to 1990s)
Pilar Aymerich Fotografia Colita, Pilar Aymerich, Guillermina Puig, Anna Turbau, Anna Boyé, Marta Povo, Marta Sentís, Pilar Villarrazo and Silvia T. Colmenero built up the image of daily life in Barcelona, an intensely lived city.
Book co-published with La Fábrica
The exhibition is based on the book of the same name co-published by La Fábrica and Barcelona City Council in 2020. Edited and with texts by Isabel Segura, Barcelona. Fotògrafes/Fotógrafas is the first book to reconstruct the city’s history through the eyes of women photographers, from here and abroad, so they can also be the central players when the city is explained through images.
“Barcelona fotògrafes” can also be viewed online from the following website:
barcelona.cat/expofotografes