The Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation, located in Cerezales del Condado, opens on 16 June 2013, at 1 p.m., an exhibition of works by the Catalan photographer Xavier Miserachs.

Thanks to the funds of the Foto Colectania Foundation, the exhibition includes 50 photographs and dedicates a room to some of his contact sheets from the MACBA_ Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, thus highlighting the importance of the archive in the creative process of an artist.

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona 1937-1998) was the most precocious photographer of the Catalan New Avant-Garde movement of the 1960s. The photographs selected for this exhibition are a representation of his most iconic work: his books Barcelona, black and white (1964), which was a milestone in the history of Spanish photobooks, and Costa Brava show (1966). Also on display are several contact sheets and a dozen or so vintage prints.

About the author

Xavier Miserachs was one of the main actors in the renewal movement of Spanish photography that managed to bring out of ostracism a medium that until then had remained disconnected from international trends and reluctant to be creative.

At the age of 17 he won the Luís Navarro prize and became a professional in 1961. He worked in book illustration, advertising and collaborated assiduously with various magazines such as La Actualidad Española and Triunfo. He travelled all over the world doing reports for the publications Gaceta Ilustrada, Interviú and Bazaar, among others.

In the 1960s a series of artistic groups such as El Paso and Parpalló coincided in our country and were the forerunners of the associative movement in the field of photography; the prodigious triangle was structured around the AFAL Group of Almería on the one hand, the Madrid School on the other, and the Catalan New Avant-Garde. The Barcelona group had leaders such as Francesc Català-Roca, Oriol Maspons and the critic Josep María Casademont, and other great photographers such as Ramón Masats, Ricard Terré, Julio Ubiña, Leopoldo Pomés and Joan Colom, among others.

Miserachs, despite his youth, joined this characteristic associative movement from the outset and participated enthusiastically in the most important group exhibitions.

The photographic influences he himself acknowledged were those of Francesc Català-Roca - a major figure very close to the photographer - and later of William Klein, whose innovative contrasts and framing, as well as the groundbreaking layout of his books, were a revelation for the young Miserachs. The harshness of the photographer's gaze and technical approach is often softened in his portraits, which reveal the weight of the humanist influence on his photography.

About the exhibition

From 1961 and throughout much of that decade, Miserachs focused on two places he knew very well: the city of Barcelona and the Costa Brava, to which we dedicate this exhibition and from which he published two books that are key to understanding that period.

In Barcelona, blanc i negre (Aymà, 1964), he travels through the city, reflecting its transformation, with images of the gypsies of Montjuïc, the streets of the Raval, the affluent area of the centre and the new neighbourhoods that welcomed emigrants, with great narrative skill, showing us a global view of the whole city. Miserachs achieved an exceptional balance in this book by combining the perspectives of both artist and chronicler.

Pere Formiguera en su Introducción a la historia de la fotografía catalana lo considera “posiblemente el mejor libro de artista fotográfico de la época”, y añade: “puede decirse que la editorial apostó con fuerza por un libro eminentemente fotográfico, que rompía todos los moldes de la producción editorial del momento para situarse de lleno en el libro de autor, en la línea de New York, Roma o Tokio de William Klein… Lejos de buscar un aspecto monumental, propagandístico y turístico de la ciudad, Miserachs nos ofreció la auténtica imagen cotidiana de Barcelona, dura y tierna al mismo tiempo.”

Costa Brava Show (Kirós, 1966) was another publication that once again represented a risky gamble on the part of the photographer and has also been highly valued by fans and experts in photobooks. Miserachs's gaze in this series oscillates between irony and less aggressive humour, recreating the spectacle of the tourism that was beginning to invade our country.

In 2011, the Cerezales Antonino y Cinia Foundation started a research project with Chus Domínguez called Territorio Archivo, which seeks to reflect the identity of a territory and to work for the conservation of the multiple photographic archives of the residents of several rural localities.

In this context, the exhibition of works by Xavier Miserachs also aims to give the importance it deserves to the existence and management of a photographer's archive as part of his creative process, including six contact sheets and a dozen vintage prints.

Miserachs himself had the opportunity in the last years of his life to review his archive, both in the sphere of his creative and professional work, and he set down his reflections on this subject in his books and essays on photography. In 1992 he commented:

“A estas alturas de mi carrera investigar en mi archivo es un experiencia muy enriquecedora porque te obliga a revisar tu trabajo y tu biografía, y te das cuenta de que una y otra coinciden. (…) Repasar mi archivo ha sido una experiencia vital ya que me ha obligado a un ejercicio de conocimiento profundo de mi mismo.”

Xavier Miserachs' archive was deposited in 2011 at the Centre d'Estudis i Documentació del Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), which catalogues, researches and manages his rights. Miserachs' daughters donated to this centre for 25 years the prints, contact sheets (some of which can be seen in this exhibition) and slides from his entire professional career.