Hardbound
Publisher: La Fabrica.
Pages: 242
An ironic and cutting look at Spain through the eyes of one of our country's most decisive photographers.
"Visit Spain" was the first message used in tourism propaganda. It was a commission on national values for the Gaceta Ilustrada. Masats' work coincides with the end of Franco's autarky regime and the opening up designed by the Ministry of Education and Tourism".
Ramón Masats (born in Caldes de Montbui, Barcelona, in 1931) is one of the protagonists of the documentary photography renewal of the 1960s. The photographic essay Los Sanfermines, initiated in 1955, is a fundamental work in his career. In 1964, he published Viejas historias de Castilla la Vieja, which includes texts by Miguel Delibes, and exhibited alongside Carlos Saura. In 1981, he returned to photography, but this time in color. His work has been recognized with various awards, including the Premio Nacional de Fotografía.
His photographs, with their not so occasional touch of Cartier Bresson, lead us to reflect on the mysterious dialectic between what remains and what transforms over time.
Masats's images capture a moment, a fragment of reality, which push us to ask ourselves what story is behind what we see and why on earth his author made them that way. His photos are thought-provoking, making us question the relationship between permanence and transformation in the context of time.
