From Fuerza Nueva to ETA, including Pujol: this was the Transition that Carlos Bosch captured.

Barcelona"My father didn't whisper, he shouted, and that's why his photographs move us so much," explains Agustina Bosch, the eldest of the four daughters of the photographer, anthropologist, and artist Carlos Bosch (Buenos Aires, 1945–2020). He was certainly a passionate man because nothing stopped him. In November 1976, while walking through the center of Madrid with his cameras hanging around his neck, he saw a group of fascist men and women from Fuerza Nueva board a bus to go to Paracuellos de Jarama. He made up the story that he was the son of a Francoist soldier and accompanied them. It wouldn't be the last time, because for three years he infiltrated many events of that far-right group. Some of the photographs, where you can see how he gets very close to his lens because he was working with a 35mm camera, can be seen in Broadcast on Transition. Carlos Bosch. 1976–1981. The exhibition, which is part of the Lumínico festival, can be visited until September in the National Archives of Catalonia.

The title marks the deadline as 1981, but there is a photograph, which is part of the exhibition, taken in 1983, and it cost the newspaper its job. The Country. "In the image, President Jordi Pujol can be seen dozing in the middle of a military parade. Bosch first went to his boss in Catalonia, Antonio Franco, who refused to publish his work. Then he went to Madrid, and Juan Antonio Cebrián, then director of the newspaper, did publish it," explains the exhibition's curator, Manel Sanz. Three years after the publication of that photograph, the photographer settled in Luxembourg with his wife and two daughters.

No filters.

"I inherited his revolutionary and anarchist side. He was extremely sensitive to social injustice," explains his eldest daughter. This sensitivity can be felt in the exhibition, which, through a series of 60 photographs, shows, in a rather crude way, some events from the years of the Revolution. Transition. There are images, like those of the sick at the Asilo del Parque (a municipal hospice and asylum that operated between 1896 and 1977, where Pompeu Fabra University is now located), that are like receiving a blow and remain etched in your retina. The same is true of those he took of the rapeseed patients in 1981. His gaze was nonconformist, and there are no filters when it comes to depicting the world's atrocities. "When he photographed a woman who was dying of starvation in the old town of Barcelona, ​​he decided to take off the clothes they had put on her and put back on the underwear they had found her in, and surround her with candles. There was manipulation, but it had a positive effect, because the woman received help."

"When the Parliament's chamber opened in 1977, for the first time since the end of the Civil War, Bosch also went in and photographed the seats with all their cobwebs," explains Sanz. On election night in June 1977, the photographer strolled through Barcelona's old town and entered a bar to photograph a tired-looking woman holding a chicken. Another image of barbarity, which is also difficult to digest, is that of the exhumation of the last person shot by Franco in Catalonia, Jon Paredes, known as Txiki. The photographer captured the moment they took him out, because his family took him to Zarautz.

Bosch had to flee Argentina overnight, on November 19, 1975. He was warned that if he didn't leave, he would most likely be assassinated, because he was linked to leftist groups. There, he trained as a photographer at Editorial Abril, became a partner at AGRA, and became the newspaper's chief photographer. NewsHe arrived in Barcelona just as Franco died. A few months later, he photographed the first LGBTI pride demonstration, which took place in Barcelona on June 26, 1977. Bosch was concerned about the police. "He was very brave and put himself on the front line." Intervive published all the photographs and a review explaining that Bosch had been beaten up," says Sanz. Shortly after, there was a meeting of photojournalists and Bosch became one of the founders of the Association of Photojournalists of Barcelona, ​​​​which would later become the Image Union UPIFC. In fact, this selection of 62 images from the National Archive of Catalonia was part of an edition of theImage Agenda, the magazine published by the Sindicato de la Imagen. The rest of the photographer's collection is in Argentina.

A teacher for many photographers

The photographer worked on many fronts. He covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, with journalist Xavier Vinader he reported on clandestine meetings with ETA, captured Salvador Dalí bedridden in a hospital, and immortalized the emeritus king making faces at him. He worked in Catalan Mail and in the magazine Change 16 and as a graphic editor of Front page. Also in Newspaper of Catalonia, in Intervive and in the newspaper delegation The Country in Catalonia. "Above all, he was a teacher," Sanz emphasizes. "When he arrived here, he had a lot of experience and was the first to create the figure of the graphic editor," he adds.

"In the 1970s in Barcelona, the Pérez de Rozas brothers had a monopoly because they were Francoists. There was a new generation of photographers who were very shameless, but we had no references, there were practically no books. Luckily, we landed Carlos Bosch. At first, he had a very tough time, a very tough time, a very tough time, at the beginning, he had a very tough time, in a very tough time, at the beginning, he had a very tough time, at the beginning, he had a very tough time, at the beginning, he had a very tough time. photographer Pepe Encinas. "He was our teacher because we were self-taught. "Everything I've learned has been thanks to Carlos Bosch," adds Encinas. The director of the National Archives of Catalonia, Pilar Cuerva, values the story told in the exhibition: "It's a message from the past that transports us to the future, bringing this period to future generations."