Like Munch and Monet, Joana Biarnés died almost blind. In her final months she used a magnifying glass to review the work that decades earlier she had embroidered with a hawk’s eye, a keen sensitivity and a unique perspective. She had set the trend.
Spain’s first photojournalist and fashion photographer, prolific and revolutionary in the sixties and seventies, was taken away by a cold five years ago but left a spirit and a legacy that flutter with joy… in addition to an archive of thousands of photos and negatives which are the most similar to King Solomon’s Mines.
They are a fountain that does not stop flowing with images never known, never seen until now and that are published in these pages for the first time courtesy of Photographic Social Vision. This foundation that keeps alive the archives of photographers still active (Outumuro, Isabel Azkarate, Anna Turbau…) and totems such as Maspons, Pomés or Jacques Léonard.
Gifted with the gift of ubiquity, or almost so, opening the boxes of this photoartist’s negatives are a treasure trove of surprises. She was everywhere, every day in one place. One day he was Alain Delon in a cowboy hat, bored during the filming of The Black Tulip; another was Pepa Flores, Marisol, dressed as a soldier with the American pilots from Torrejón de Ardoz and a non-subliminal message in the background: “Explosives.”
Another day it was Lucía Bosé with her son, an almost adolescent Miguel and the rest of the family in Somosaguas. Another with Mel Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn and Marisol talking and laughing. Mina, Charlton Heston, Orson Welles and the singer Raphael, whom she photographed for ten years, in all possible situations.
The atmosphere at the Barcelona headquarters of the Photographic Social Vision foundation is conducive to talking about a singular figure who, at his professional peak, abandoned the profession from one day to the next, sold his cameras after a week and went to Ibiza to live. and cook for friends.
The story is more or less known, one day Natalia Figueroa, who had been a journalist colleague with Biarnés at ABC and who was Raphael’s wife, told him to open a restaurant after tasting a arroz a banda that gave rise to Ca Na Joana. , a place of pilgrimage and happiness for the photographer who would hardly pick up a camera again in her life.
“Joana Biarnés never took photos again except for those dishes of food that turned out well,” reveals Sílvia Omedes who, together with Imma Cortés and the rest of the team, undertook a marathon project around Biarnés in the last years of her life, when He closed the restaurant and returned to Viladecavalls.
“In his last years – he explains – they detected melanoma, he made us swear not to say anything, we didn’t know what he had left, that’s why we did everything at high speed, photo pocket. Photo Spain, book, documentary…”. Cortés, responsible for the Biarnés archive, documented the five years in which he collected prizes and awards.
“It’s an inside look, but what happened is what we documented, a team journey. Everyone surrendered at his feet, he conquered. It is no longer there, but the effect has not faded,” says Cortés, not only because of the material that is emerging but also because of the scholarship that bears his name and that promotes the brave work of young investigative photojournalists.
“In August 2018 – confesses Omedes -, three months before dying and eating in the port of Palamós, Joana told me: ‘I don’t have children, the day I leave and since you are managing my file and it provides income, I would like to that the profits will help other photographers.’ It is already the fifth year that we have given a scholarship of 8,000 euros that bears her name for research projects,” she points out. The last to receive it is Jordi Jon.
In parallel, the discovery of new material, never seen before, is exciting for the foundation team: “Unpublished photos continually appear and we have to look for them. It is a very large file. It is true that in recent years, as biopics have become so popular, Joana is an impressive source of images… one of Marisol and another of Miguel Bosé are being made,” says Omedes.
In perspective, it is difficult to understand how someone who created fashion trends with his “Wednesday” reports in Pueblo would leave the job overnight. To understand it, you have to remember what his father, also a photographer, told him before leaving Terrassa: “No em facis baixar mai el cap” (“never make me ashamed”).
Sílvia Omedes remembers: “There is a moment when in an agency they tell her: ‘Joana, make up a story with Lola Flores (dressed as the Wizard King) and help me sell’ and she says ‘not even kidding’. She says she will never fail anyone and she leaves the profession in 24 hours.
That day she comes home and tells her husband, Jean-Michel Bamberger: “This is not for me.” And she lowered the curtain. But she with so much passion for the job? “Be careful with the concept of passion,” says Cortés, “because photography for Joana was a profession, at the beginning, when we told her that her work deserved a book, an exhibition, she said ‘babes, really?’. “She saw herself as a photojournalist, not a photoartist.”
Jean Michel Bamberger was his companion for life and remembers that day for Magazine. “That day when they offered her the Lola Flores report, she came home: ‘Look what happened to me…’. She had gone to offer a report about someone who had been cured of cancer and they told her that it didn’t sell. She left him and we lived a wonderful stage of our life in Eivissa.”
Imma documented the five years in which he collected prizes and awards. “It’s an inside look, but what happened is what we documented, a team journey.” The Biarnés team and the Biarnés effect, everyone surrendered at their feet, they conquered. It’s gone, but the effect hasn’t worn off. She works with young designers, with young models, part of the clothes that come out of her are hers. “She was very well dressed, she was very flirtatious, she didn’t want to give up any of her femininity to go to work.
Sílvia Omedes remembers that in the final years, those of recognition, there were so many requests that she asked, are we not having interviews this week? We traveled all over Spain – he remembers – in my father’s van that was used to deliver wine. My father said that we had to vinyl it and put on Biarnés Team. We did not arrive on time”.
