Neither Teresa nor Pijoaparte nor the maid Maruja nor Cardinal, neighborhood mobster. The aim of Jeff Wall (Vancouver, 1946) is not directed at any main character, but rather on Hortensia, the Syringe, the young pharmacy clerk who loses her mind to the outclassed motorcycle thief.
The Canadian artist, winner of the Hasselblad Award, was commissioned by curator and fellow photographer Jorge Ribalta to portray the soul of Carmel, as part of a project promoted by Macba and the City Council to represent the social and urban essence of Barcelona within the Neighborhood Plan program. Ribalta suggested him to work from 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 fifties and sixties (Català Roca, Miserachs, Maspons, Colom…), “the great novel of popular Barcelona”.
Wall agreed. As in his approach to other literary texts (such as 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 ellipsis: the moment, which does not appear in the narrative, that Jeringa calls the police on the phone, from the pharmacy where she works, to report Pijoaparte for stealing motorbikes.
The fifteen-year-old girl has not managed to attract the attention of the boy, hung by the pija Teresa. Hortensia is a disturbance 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 be accepted in bourgeois circles of the city.
But the girl is also for him a vague sense of danger: “Later he thought he should have said something to her”, says the narrator, when Pijoaparte leaves the young woman once again, with his “evil eyes of ash”, on its Carmel portal. Pages later, the neighborhood thief is arrested in the middle of the street. It is not explained in the book, but it is clear who betrayed him.
Wall has spent the last six weeks recreating this precise elliptical scene. That is why it has been installed in a warehouse in L’Hospitalet. The photo was finally taken last week. This Saturday, about to leave Barcelona, ??La Vanguardia receives in a hotel in Born to answer some questions about a work that, in any case, will not be able to be seen until it is exhibited in the summer of 2024 at the Macba.
Why did you choose this secondary character? “Well, when Ribalta suggested the idea to me – he answers – it did not seem likely to me that he would accept it, because in my other works on literary works I have been the one who, after reading them, spontaneously recognized something that interested me . But I didn’t know this book before. It was when I was told the story that I found the character of this parentless woman fascinating, who we only know works in a pharmacy, and who, acting against the neighborhood custom of not informing the police, decides to report Manolo for his little crimes”.
“I was fascinated – he continues – that this girl, who lives in a new neighborhood like Carmel at the time, wants to have a better life. He acts out of jealousy, like any teenager, but also, in a way, to help Manolo get back on the right path. And with respect to your question, well, everything has already been said about Pijoaparte, and she is a character yet to be discovered”.
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 paid attention 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, which the Canadian artist knows – and praises – the vocation to serve the community.
It is difficult for the journalist to suppress the desire to know more details about a photo that will still be unpublished for another year. However, during the conversation, the artist makes some concessions: it is done in color; it will be life-size and reproduces the supposed storeroom of the supposed pharmacy where Jeringa works.
Recreating a mid-fifties pharmacy has not been an easy task. The guild helped him. Also some individuals. The author is clear that the establishment, like the neighborhood, must have been new. And this poses a challenge: how can you make objects that have been preserved since then but that have already accumulated the wear and tear of more than half a century look new?
The phone. The phone is key in this story. “I don’t see Hortensia personally going to the police station; I think I should have made a call to report Manolo. But at that time there were no telephones in private homes, so it seemed more logical to me to place the action in a business. And since Marsé tells us he works in a pharmacy…”
The phone in 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 adaptations of his work that were made in the cinema? And his photograph is still a scene from a film… “No, I didn’t know that – answers Wall with humor -, although I am also critical of the film that was made about Últimas afternoons with Teresa But if he were alive now, 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 photograph based on Mishima, Wall also resorted to ellipsis: he represents the protagonist, from her back, removing the sand from her shoe. A gesture that is not described in the novel. What attitude will the Syringe have in this photo that already exists but that we can’t see yet? The hope that Jeff Wall, in a fit of insanity, will pick up the mobile phone and briefly reveal the image to us has already vanished, it is time to conclude the meeting. The artist suggests that he would like Xavier Cervera to photograph him in a children’s park on Carrer Mercaders. He loves individual public benches for their design and strength.
He explains that he does not usually repeat work in the same city. He did it in Los Angeles and now in Barcelona. The first foray into the Catalan capital took place in 1999, when the Mies van der Rohe Foundation 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 a 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 are participating in this initiative.
