Miserachs Barcelona

Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Miserachs Barcelona celebrates one of the finest of all urban photobooks: Barcelona Blanc i Negre (1964), the masterpiece of a photographer named Xavier Miserachs, who was only twenty-five years old when he made it. It is a monumental work, with almost four hundred photographs of active, nervous city-dwellers who constitute, when all is
said and done, the city itself, where the architecture is but a backdrop to a passionate urban existence.
The exhibition invites the spectator literally to wander through the pages of the photobook, confronting its characters face to face. In the catalogue, designed by Ramon Pez and Laia Abril, the photographs take on new life. The images enter into continuous dialogues and encounters, following the ideas of Xavier Miserachs, who proposed open readings and the active participation of the reader. The result is a chaotic, unpredictable meandering, in which good humor and empathy predominates: a journey in time without nostalgia.