Face to face: the subtle art of portraiture
Foto Colectania explores the magic of portrait photography in the exhibition Cara a cara, which has more than 100 works by 49 different artists on display
García-Alix: "The face is not the mirror of the soul"
Oriol Maspons, Joan Colom and Tony Catany, on display
The popular photographer Gervasio Sánchez spends between one and 60 seconds to take a portrait. If he takes more time than that, he knows the result will be deceptive. He says he doesn't like to “make people dizzy”, because what he most values is naturalness. Sánchez, who has experienced war firsthand says: “For me portraits are a tool to show the drama of people who live in war or post-war situations with dignity.” He remembers all of the names of those he has photographed, such as Sofia, a little girl from Mozambique who had both legs blown off by bomb. He talks of her as if she was his daughter.
Yet, the fact is that every photographer has a different way of taking a portrait. One of the maestros of the genre, Humberto Rivas, used to say that for him it was like a fight between the photographer and the model: “If the photographer doesn't win, the image doesn't work.”
For another top portrait photographer, Alberto García-Alix, a good photograph happens in an almost cathartic state. Born a provocateur, García-Alix dismantles one of the most popular sayings: “The face is not the mirror of the soul. The photographer must know the intention behind a photograph, what and how he wants to see it.”
The Fundació Foto Colectania has opened its new season with an exhibition of portraits carefully selected from its archive, made up of more than 3,000 photographs signed by Spanish and Portuguese artists. The show, titled Cara a cara, is in Barcelona after a long journey through municipal exhibition halls, as part of a project sponsored by the Diputació. However, the Barcelona show is different, and is sponsored by Estrella Damn.
The more than 100 works on display, which go from the 1950s to the present, are signed by 49 different photographers and are grouped into two sections: one that focuses on looks and another on gestures.
Oriol Maspons, Alberto Schommer, Miguel Trillo, Joan Colom, Ricard Terré, Leopoldo Pomés and Toni Catany are some of the artists featured in this portrait extravaganza. All of them exhibit their own artistic personality, but share a mental framework, which Juan Manuel Castro Prieto defines as, “what matters is the human being.”