About Portraits of architects

This exhibition brings together portraits of architects taken throughout the 1980s, both on casual and scheduled occasions, at various cultural events in Barcelona: conferences, interviews, and especially during the Cultural Weeks of the Barcelona School of Architecture.
These are portraits taken from different approaches and distances, with the common characteristic of their instantaneous nature, expressive of a certain spontaneity of the subject. Architects smoking, architects with beards, architects gesticulating, looking straight ahead, engaging in conversation, or gazing into the distance. Smiling or posing in profile... These photographs were taken under rather poor lighting conditions, without flash to avoid disturbing, and using highly sensitive film, resulting in very grainy images.
Over time, as I reviewed the contents of my archive, it became evident to me that it was not enough to simply preserve this material; I had to find a way to disseminate it. The situation of all this hidden material troubled me. The opportunity to exhibit it came through the FAD. The architect Beth Galí, president of the FAD, suggested that I gather these images for an exhibition coinciding with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the FAD Architecture and Interior Design Awards. I understand a portrait exhibition as a collection of bodily gestures and facial expressions. As a whole, it can have the added value of a small game of contrasts while also composing a shared memory.

Barcelona, july 2009