Joan Colom. From the series 5th District, 1960
Joan Colom. From the series 5th District, 1960
The new photographic avant-garde in Catalonia reached its aesthetic culmination during the first years of the 1960s, precisely with the work of an amateur photographer, Joan Colom,author of an unforgettable documentary about the “Chinese” neighbourhood of Barcelona, which led to the final consequences the formal and poetic possibilities of the photographic realism of the new avant-garde and was articulated with a series of images, in a pseudo-cinematographic way, that broke away for ever from the idea of the unique image.
This period would be the last moment of the hegemony of reporting as a photographic form of avant-garde. The historic conditions with respect to the role of photography in the media would change throughout the sixties, and this would determine the future destiny of reporting.
From the 5th District Series, Joan Colom Altemir, Barcelona, circa 1960