Neither Teresa, nor Pijoaparte, nor the maid Maruja nor the Cardenal, a neighborhood gangster. The objective of Jeff Wall (Vancouver, 1946) is not addressed to any main character, but rather to Hortensia, the Syringe, the young pharmacy employee who drinks the winds for the out-of-class motorcycle thief.
The Canadian artist, winner of the Hasselblad Award, was commissioned by the curator and photographer Jorge Ribalta to portray the soul of Carmel, forming part of a project promoted by MACBA and the City Council to represent the social and urban essence of Barcelona within the Pla de Barris. Ribalta suggested that he work on the novel Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966), by Juan Marsé. The curator sees this book as the equivalent of the great photographic icons of the 50s and 60s (Català Roca, Miserachs, Maspons, Colom…), “the great novel of popular Barcelona”.
Wall agreed. Just as he did in his approach to other literary texts (as in After ‘Spring snow’ by Yukio Mishima, chapter 34, 2000-2005), he has focused on a very specific aspect of the plot. In fact, he has photographed an ellipse: the moment, which does not appear in the narration, when Jeringa calls the police, from the pharmacy where he works, to denounce Pijoaparte for stealing motorcycles.
The fifteen-year-old has not managed to attract the boy’s attention, hung up on the posh Teresa. Hortensia is a nuisance to the protagonist, the voice of his social conscience, the reminder of where he comes from and where he should be, instead of wasting time trying to gain admittance into the city’s bourgeois circles.
But the girl is also for him a vague sense of danger: “Later he thought that he should have told her something,” says the narrator, when Pijoaparte once again abandons the young woman, with his “evil ash eyes”, in her Carmel gate. Pages later, the neighborhood thief is arrested in the middle of the street. He is not explicit in the book, but it is clear who has betrayed him.
Wall has dedicated his last six weeks to recreating that precise elliptical scene. For this he has installed himself in a warehouse in l’Hospitalet. The photo was finally made last week. This Saturday, about to leave Barcelona, ??he receives La Vanguardia at a Born hotel to answer some questions about a work that, in any case, cannot be seen until it is exhibited in the summer of 2024 at the Macba.
Why did you choose that secondary character? “Well, when Ribalta suggested the idea to me – he replies – it didn’t seem likely that I would accept it, because in my other works on literary works I have been the one who, when reading them, spontaneously recognized something that interested me. But this book I did not know before. It was when they explained the story to me that I found the character of this woman without parents fascinating, of whom we only know that she works in a pharmacy, and who, acting against the neighborhood custom of not informing the police, decides to denounce Manolo for their tricks.”
“I was fascinated – he continues – that this girl, who lives in a new neighborhood like Carmel was then, wants to have a better life. She acts out of jealousy, like any teenager, but also, somehow, to help Manolo get back on the straight and narrow. And regarding her question, well, everything has already been said about Pijoaparte, and she is a character to discover ”.
In the photograph, the character of Hortensia is played by a 15-year-old girl from Carmel. “For Jorge Ribalta -explains Wall- it was important that the model was from the neighborhood, and I listened to him because he has had a decisive influence on this project, which is his idea”. In fact, a copy of the photograph will remain permanently in the Juan Marsé del Carmel Library, from which the Canadian artist knows – and extols – his vocation to serve the community.
It is difficult for the journalist to suppress the desire to know more details of a photo that will remain unpublished for a year. However, during the conversation, the artist makes some concessions: it is taken in color; It will be life-size and reproduces the supposed back room, the back room, of the supposed pharmacy where the Syringe works.
Recreating a pharmacy from the mid-50s has not been an easy task. The guild has helped him. Also some individuals. The author is clear that the establishment, like the neighborhood, must be new. And that poses a challenge: how to make them look like new objects that have been preserved since then but already accumulate the wear and tear of more than half a century?
The phone. The telephone is key in this story. “I don’t see Hortensia going personally to the police station, so I think she must have made a call to denounce Manolo. But at that time there were no telephones in private homes, so it seemed more logical to situate the action in a business. And since Marsé tells us that she works in a pharmacy… ”
The phone used for the photo has its own story: it belonged to the writer himself and came into Wall’s hands through his daughter, Berta Marsé.
The artist did not get to know Juan Marsé. Do you know that he was very critical of most of the film adaptations of his work? And his photograph is still a scene from a movie… “No, I didn’t know that,” Wall replies humorously, “although I’m also critical of the film that was made about Last Afternoons with Teresa. But, if he were alive, he couldn’t tell me anything, because I recreate a fact about which he wrote absolutely nothing! He didn’t even locate the pharmacy…”
In the photography based on Mishima, Wall also resorted to ellipsis: he represents the protagonist, from behind, removing the sand from her shoe. A gesture that is not described in the novel. What attitude will the Syringe have in that photo that already exists but that we still can’t see? With the hope that Jeff Wall, in a fit of foolishness, will pick up his mobile phone and briefly reveal the image to us, it’s time to end the meeting. The artist suggests that he would like Xavier Cervera to photograph him in a children’s park on Mercaders street. He loves the individual public benches because of their design and resistance.
He says that he does not usually repeat work in the same city. She did it in Los Angeles and, now, in Barcelona. His first foray into the Catalan capital was in 1999, when the Fundació Mies van der Rohe invited him to intervene in the pavilion (he did so with a work based on Kafka).
The public project in which Jeff Wall’s photography is part aspires to give prominence to neighborhoods, historically underrepresented in the image of the city. In addition to the Canadian photographer, Martha Rosler, Gregori Civera, José Luís Guerín, Mabel Palacín, Manolo Laguillo, Pilar Monsell, Laia Abril, Gilbert Fastenaekens, Jorge Yeregui, Bleda y Rosa, Pedro G. Romero and Carmen Secanella participate in this initiative.
