Pilar Aymerich confesses that she is fully urban, not rural or maritime. The city is accepted as a place to live and, obviously, to work. The profile of a citizen encourages her to leave the house, to feel at ease on the street, immersed in the events.
Everything that is considered news seduces her and she surrenders to reflect it with images. In front of the show, she reflects it not as an observer or curious or even a witness: as a participant. Most of the photographs she chose to make her book La Barcelona de Pilar Aymerich, just published by Comanegra-Ajuntament, show that the very brave author is part of the group or the scene in front of her. So, she photographed from the inside, and this inside was physical, but also ideological.
It is true that it was a time of struggles, claims, protests, denunciations, but it is no less true that there was no barrier between the subject and the photographer, but that she stood by those who acted. This means that the images appear enriched with an intensity worthy of participation, even if it is from a different visual angle, forced by the mission to capture, show, denounce, defend.
Well, but it is also important to know how the photographer acted as a celebrity portraitist or not. Well, his attitude did not differ. She confesses that she was trying to gain his trust, and she finds herself ready and clever when it comes to telling anecdotes, as with the camera-reticent, misogynist and slobbery de Pla, who mistakes her for a messenger who has come to bring him some requested books; she takes advantage of the misunderstanding and asks him to take some photos; he then assures that he is going to the car in search of the books, and hits two. The two portraits he stole from her are magnificent.
He also managed them with the difficult Rodoreda. He sensed at the end of the talk that using the language of flowers would tame him; as soon as he introduced the topic of gardening and the personal cultivation of gardenias in his garden he detected that the rejection evaporated and almost without realizing it he surrendered to the camera.
The result is an exciting, genuine, accurate document of an almost revolutionary historical period, exciting, moving, stimulated by hope, struggle, idealism. Aymerich has lived up to his standards.
