The KBR does justice to reporter Puig Farran with his first monographic exhibition.

BarcelonaThe legacy of Lleida reporter Joan Andreu Puig Farran (Belianes, 1904 - Barcelona, ​​1982) is full of iconic images. Sports became a massive phenomenon in the 1920s and 1930s. There are also family images by Francesc Macià, in which everyday life and politics blend, and of the ravages of the October Events, as well as the iconic photograph of President Lluís Companys at the Pins del Vallès military training camp. Puig Farran was best known for an article that Josep Cruanyes dedicated to him in the magazine Head and for the work of the Observatory of Daily Life, which included him in its book on Catalan photojournalists of the 1930s, and the Barcelona Photographic Archive. And this Thursday, the Mapfre Foundation's Kbr center opens its first monographic exhibition, entitled Joan Andreu Puig Farran: the turbulent decade (1929-1939). "Puig Farran is one of the most important of the small group of photographers who marked a turning point in photojournalism in Barcelona, ​​​​and I would say also in Spain," says Antoni Monné Campañà, the curator of the exhibition along with Arnau González and Vilalta. Monné is similar to another legendary reporter, Antoni Campañà, who partnered with Puig Farran upon his return from exile in a postcard and tourist guidebook company.

In a way, the exhibition that the National Art Museum of Catalonia dedicated to Campañà four years ago contributed to this one, since when Puig Ferran's heirs saw it, they reminded Monné that they had around 1,000 glass plates, to which Cruanyes and the Observatory of Life Qu Campañà had had access. Among these plates are missing some of the most emblematic images of Puig Ferran, but the project took a turn when the curators found about five hundred of his photographs in the archives of The Vanguard. On the other hand, coinciding with this exhibition, a large retrospective of the American photographer Edward Weston can also be seen.

In addition to dedicating himself to an exceptional profession a century ago, for Monné it is absolutely necessary to vindicate Puig Farran for his vision and his power. "There are very few who worked in that number of media [Humanity, Esplai, The Morning, The Opinion, The Vanguard[a...] and with the amount of material they ended up producing. My grandfather had a completely different style; he took artistic photography; he was a very restless, hyperactive man, and his photography was very fast. But he always said that the best photographer he had ever known was Puig Farran. So, when his son, my uncle, who is also a photographer, dedicated himself to photography, he told him that he should learn from him," he explains. "Puig Farran had an enviable photographic eye; he could see where the perspective would go, what the best shot would be, where the best place to stand to take it would be. In some of his photographs, there is a ladder, which was the inevitable companion of photojournalists of that time to always get the best shot," Monné emphasizes.

The Civil War left a deep mark on Puig Farran: he spent time in French concentration camps and when he welcomed the return of the exiles, he was imprisoned in the Miranda de Ebro camp and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted thanks to the intervention of his brother-in-law, the architect Manuel Casas. Later, Puig Farran, refined and focused on advertising and tourism photography, refused to talk about those years or the work he had done during the Second Republic. The thousand photographs of the family and the five hundred in the archive of The Vanguard They must be just a small part of everything he did. "With this exhibition, we are witnessing a historic moment of recovering one of the great names of Spanish photojournalism," says Monné.

Barcelona, ​​​​a big city as vibrant as Chicago

Little is known about Puig Farran's training and early career, but he must have begun in the rural area of Ponent. Later, he experienced the explosion of the print press in a "convulsive, rich, and plural" Barcelona, as Arnau González says, comparing the Catalan capital to cities like Vienna, Berlin, and Chicago. "In these and other capitals, life never stops, and photography can capture religious life and also the subversion of morality," he explains. Thus, throughout the tour, you can see Puig Farran's photographs of the 1929 Universal Exposition, and later those of the October Events. And in the wake of the 1936 coup d'état, like so many other photojournalists, he had to become a war reporter, and in the final section of the tour, you can see how he switched from a plate camera to a Leica. "In his account of the Civil War, you can see contradictions like how social life continues and people go to the beach, but at the same time, the effects of the war are taking place," says González.

Puig Farran was one of the few reporters who attended the Republican expedition to Mallorca. "They are truly fascinating photographs because it is a military operation that has been mythologized," explains González. "His war photography is more active, more direct," says Monné. "At times it reminds me of Capa, like when the image is slightly out of focus, but he still took more static photographs. When he takes vertical photographs, which he continues to take with a plate camera, it is because he is looking for a cover for The Vanguard", warns Monné.