Some milk bottles were to blame. When Kim Manresa was a child, his parents sent him to buy milk at a grocery store in the Barcelona neighborhood of Nou Barris and he was happy because the shopkeeper always gave him some trading cards inspired by Jules Verne’s book Around the World in 80 days. He “saw those drawings and wanted to go to all those places.” He found a way and, in the process, a vocation: at the age of 14, photography captured him.
Armed with a simple camera that his father had given him, that curious and determined boy took to the streets after leaving school to capture the social struggle that was boiling in the corners of the neighborhood. He immediately earned everyone’s recognition and affection. “In a demonstration I dropped my camera and it broke; That same day they collected money from all the neighbors and bought me a new one. In those days, everyone helped each other.” They were the first steps of a giant. The Catalan photographer Kim Manresa Mirabet (Barcelona, ??1961) celebrates 50 years of experience, becoming an international reference in photography. His critical and personal view, which has been reflected in hundreds of reports around the world in the most prestigious media, including La Vanguardia, where he worked for four decades, has been exhibited in more than a thousand theaters and has been published in a thirty books.
The last one, Father, with the collaboration of the singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat, includes a sample of his work in which his commitment to social denunciation and the defense of human rights and the environment stands out.
Restless, tenacious and free, Manresa has used the camera to claim a way of positioning himself in the world. “Not only am I interested in photography,” he explains, “for me the camera has been a tool to show the planet and give a voice to the disinherited.”
He has done it with abundance and talent. From his look at the black and hidden Barcelona before the euphoric froth before the Olympic Games in Barcelona Nit to his plea against excision from Burkina Faso published in this newspaper’s Magazine in 1997, considered by the Associated Press as one of the hundred best reports of the twentieth century.
“I have tried to explain how wonderful diversity is in the world, but without ever forgetting to denounce injustices and abuses.” This is what he did in reports on child prostitution in Brazil, abandoned children in Iraq, the climate crisis, education in the world or shamanism in Latin America.
Tireless, energetic and allergic to the editorial desk, Manresa is one of the most important photographers of recent decades because of the way he leaves the camera aside. Because of how he talks and laughs with the protagonists of his stories and because of how he listens to and treats, with respect, joy and as equals, those who appear in his photographs. He is a fisherman from a lost African village, a globally successful writer or a soccer star.
His long-term project together with fellow member of this newspaper Xavi Ayén, on the Nobel Prize winners in Literature, which has led them to portray more than thirty writing geniuses in their places of life and work, is one of the The latest great works of a long-time photographer: his passion for honest photography, influenced by his unbridled interest in anthropology and archaeology, continues in projects all over the world, from Mexico to Mali or from Andorra to Iceland.
When half a century ago the photographer Colita – one of the important names in Kim’s beginnings along with other teachers such as Josep Maria Huertas Claveria, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán or Joaquín Ibarz – welcomed that young Manresa as an assistant in her studio, she wrote that she had the feeling of being in front of a feline. “When I opened the door that Monday in February 1976,” Colita explained, “a cat appeared out of a storm. “It was Kim.” Colita experienced firsthand the dazzling evolution of a tireless photographer. “My cat – Colita concluded – today is a tiger. His photography is voracious. He promotes awareness and goes viral (…) There are images that are punches in the eyes and kicks in the heart. And only the great ones know how to do it.”
Almost half a century ago, that humble boy from Nou Barris, who collected travel cards when he went to get milk from the grocery store, dreamed of traveling the world and explaining it. For 50 years he has traveled and portrayed it like no one else. And he still has some reel left: “I have more energy than ever,” he says.
