The new exhibition hall of Fujifilm’s Wonder Photo Shop, located in the center of Barcelona (Gran de Gràcia, 1) has been inaugurated today with the exhibition Meli, Cadaqués, Dalí and will remain open until April 15. There are 85 images by the photographer Melitó Casals, better known as Meli (Roda de Ter, 1910-Figueres, 1990), who for 40 years maintained a close friendship with Dalí. Fruit of that trust are the numerous photos that he took of her, of which 22 are shown here. The rest are from a Cadaqués before the tourist ‘boom’.
The exhibition is a continuation of the one that could be seen last summer at the Cadaqués Museum, organized by the Fundació Joan Vehí and curated by Pere Maset. Some of these images, such as those of Dalí with a civil guard, that of the artist with the fisherman is Cambrilenc -which inspired him a painting- or that of himself sunbathing, with espardenyes and in the six-legged chair that was made design ex professo are already emblematic.
Among the photos shown there is one as special as the one in which Dalí himself, together with Meli, the driver and assistant Arturo Caminada and his friend Emili Puignau hold an image of the painter’s wedding with Gala. In reality, on the day of the wedding, held in privacy at the Els Àngels sanctuary, near Girona, there were no photographs. But Meli took a photo of both of them after a while, had it exposed in his store, and later gave it to Dalí. It was at that moment that the image that is now exhibited was made. And this is an example of the many stories behind each photograph, as explained in detail by Jordi Casals, the son, also known as Meli junior.
This new Fujifilm exhibition space has 250 square meters on the ground floor of its Wonder Photo Shop in Barcelona. It is a multipurpose space, created to continue promoting photographic culture and the arts. Barcelona was the first European city chosen by Fujifilm to install its Wonder Photo Shop in 2015, after having done so in Tokyo. And now it is facing a first renovation, with this new space that opens with the exhibition on Dalí and Cadaqués. “Barcelona has always maintained a very special relationship with the world of photography. For this reason, we did not hesitate to choose it as the starting point for the project in Europe”, says Eduardo López, director of Imaging at Fujifilm Spain.
Fujifilm currently has 107 stores implementing the WPS concept in Europe, spread across 17 countries. The Imaging division, as the photography area in the Japanese company is known, accounts for 39% of Fujifilm Europe’s business, the result of renewed interest, especially among young people and women, in printed photography and even in analog cameras. , in a phenomenon similar to that of the vinyl revival. The opening ceremony was attended by Toshi Iida, president of Fujifilm Europe; Shin Udono, Senior Vice President of Imaging Solutions at Fujifilm Europe; and Pedro Mesquita, general director of Fujifilm in Spain and Portugal, among other directors of the Japanese firm.