Project: Re-foto Barcelona
Working across Time is based on re-photography, a painstaking genre in which a scene previously photographed is shot again with the aim to show the passage of time through the comparison of the different images taken at the same place in different moments.
However, re-photography does not entail merely taking a photograph for a second time; the activity is also based on the thorough selection of historical material and on research aimed at enabling us to set up our camera exactly where someone did so before.
In this sense, the new photograph obtained is the by-product of a meditation on three subjects: the original photographer, the photographer who comes afterwards, and the viewer who observes both of them.
I had just been given the first iPad by my sister as a present, and had stored the archival images on it to take with me to find the locations of the images I was selected to re-photograph. Holding up the iPad to verify the location, I noticed interesting reflections in the glass on the iPad of the modern world behind me, and with my digital camera, photographed the iPad screen, merging the old images and the new landscapes in a new interpretation for the colour series.
For the black and white images, I tried to place the new technology in the scene, merging the original perspective with a contemporary context and a wider aspect.
Refotografiar Barcelona was exhibited at the Arxiu Fotografic de Barcelona, 2011- 2012 with an accompanying catalogue and is in the permanent collection of the gallery.
