Joan Vilatobà. Where in heaven will I find you?, undated

The massive industrialization of the photography based on the new models of Kodak in 1888, marked the birth of amateurism, and what could be considered its elitist complement and counterpart, pictorialism, understood to be the first discourse of artistic legitimisation of photography.    

Faced with technological standardization and documental utilitarianism, pictorialism proposed the use of pigmentary techniques that evoked the manual work of paintings, as well as their symbolic, picturesque or sublime themes, in accordance with the aesthetic paradigms of the modern art of the 19th century, which was based on the romantic principle of genius. In some way the concept of “creation” was introduced into photographic techniques, vindicating the figure of the photographer as an author and interpreter of reality.  Within this framework, Joan Vilatobà created a series of works which moved between symbolic allegory and customs, and photography through topics such as beauty, death, love, etc., of which Where in heaven will I find you? is an example.

Where in the Sky Will I Find You? [2], Joan Vilatobà, circa 1903-1905