Barcelona Metropolis

The book La Barcelona de Pilar Aymerich, published by Comanegra and the Barcelona City Council, is organised into various themes that illuminate places and movements in our recent history: workers’ struggles, the explosion of the most militant feminism, the resurgence of the theatre, the leading players in culture and politics, the offbeat city… It features the characters and the scenes, as well as the turbulent and impassioned moments of the transition to democracy, of the struggles to turn a dreary and repressive world into a fairer and more democratic one, moments in which the photographer engages with her camera, like another hand among those pushing and shoving. Leaving aside impossible objectivities, Aymerich takes the side dictated by reason and the heart.

It is in the book’s chapter on portraits that we can admire the author’s skill in capturing the unexplored facets of the subject of the image. In Aymerich’s face-to-face interaction with the subjects she portrays, aside from the technical precision with which she plays with light and focus to offer optimum definition, an intuition can be discerned that grasps the essence of the person before her. And this is how she challenges the passive spectators and invites us to ascertain what that expression, that smile or that scene tells us about the character.

The photographer

The life and oeuvre of Pilar Aymerich are displayed in a carousel in the pages of this book. It encompasses nearly thirty years of intense experiences and a passionate love for the city and its inhabitants. We can follow her life story (as long as we fit the pieces together) as a child from the district of El Carmel who took flight following her theatrical training at the Adrià Gual school of drama, where she met Montserrat Roig and was taught by Maria Aurèlia Capmany and Ricard Salvat; her return to Barcelona from London and Paris, and the beginnings of her journalistic work with Roig.

From that time, still in the grip of Franco’s dictatorship, we find her affiliations to feminism and left-wing protest movements, and she reaffirms her genuine interest in culture and her love for the theatre and for the city. The book also offers hints of her cultural points of reference, authors who, from different disciplines, such as playwriting, poetry, painting, politics and journalism, have increasingly found a place of refuge in the author’s spirit.

The book affords a glimpse into what the photographer observed through her eyes, as well as an insight into her circumstances, because Aymerich reveals to us in this book what is never explained about creation itself. In some cases, the author discloses her reflections before and after the act of taking the photograph; while in others, she explains the impressions stirred by a certain environment, the emotions that a character arouses in her, and she even confesses the strategies she employs to achieve a particular frame or to catch the ideal light.

The book is filled with stories that now seem impossible to us, because of how regulated coexistence has become and how impassive we citizens have become. But, thanks to the keen eye and sensitivity of Pilar Aymerich, the past makes its presence felt to us and those events return to us now in this book, to bear witness to what we once were and to what we once did. And to demonstrate to those who did not live through it that we can, as Aymerich asserts, “stage the revolution with joy”.