The Italian model, daughter of an oil magnate, came to Barcelona fleeing the pressures of the industry and her family. Here, she connected with the Gauche Divine, fell in love with Xavier Corbetó, and created a jewelry collection for Tiffany & Co. In that 1971 portrait, Bernad photographed her as a human being, not a divine one. Without makeup, she was photographed by Josep Bohigas, son of the architect Oriol Bohigas.
From Rodoreda to Espriu: the eternal smiles captured by Antoni Bernad
A book collects the photographer's memoirs, incredible stories from five decades behind the camera.
BarcelonaWhen Antoni Bernad's camera spoke, it was as if an angel had passed by. Magic had happened; something had ethereally transformed reality, always so subjective. Antoni Bernad acts on us like a seductive magician. First, he envelops you in a layer of bizarre flattery, and when he has you disarmed, naked, he clicks. Then the angel that accompanies us all emerges, the essential and intimate moment we carry hidden, the hidden treasure we often don't even know we're keeping. Many of the smiles you'll see in this report are stolen, snatched away by the photographic wand of an artist with a gift: that of provocative sympathy.
We chose smiles. We could also have let ourselves be enchanted by lost glances, by fears, by loneliness. But smiles predominate in the universe of the photographer and the man, and with them we celebrate the joy of living that so defines Antoni Bernad, capable of capturing beauty in every gesture, in every packaging, in every knowledge. His camera, his eye, is the extension of a heart that beats free and curious, playful and uninhibited. Indiscreet, that is how he sees invisible things in us. That is how he plays, until he cages us in a spontaneous eternal image.
Antoni Bernad loves photography as much as he loves life, as much as he loves his friends, those who are here and those who have passed away: Beth Galí, Antoni Llena, Laura Ponte, Oriol Bohigas, Elsa Peretti, Antoni Tàpies, Gae Aulenti, Maye Maier, Ricard Bofill, Miu... his subjects have easily become close people, long-lasting relationships. He never leaves anyone indifferent. He's an angel, someone who walks a few centimeters elevated, who moves in an unknown dimension. He is and he isn't. He flies over us, he liberates us, he makes us uncomfortable. And ultimately, he humanizes us.
Can a photograph, a work of art, be told? For years, Antoni Bernad has been sharing, orally and with humor, the incredible stories of five decades behind the camera (1960-2010) as a fashion and portrait photographer, succulent anecdotes that reveal his innate ability to provoke and capture glances and moments that transcend us. Now, he's finally compiled them in a book published by Blume, a memoir that brings together more than 200 images, many of them annotated, a whole continuity of genuine expression, with cinema as the great inspiring reference: "My photos owe more to impressions received from cinema than from fashion," he says. A subtle effort to pursue always scapular interiorities.
In the prologue to the work, the artist and inseparable companion Antoni Llena speaks of the three elements that give character to Antoni Bernad's photography: "Variety, naturalness and taste", elements with which he has managed to avoid the easy "morbid attraction" of all creative activity when one lets oneself be carried away by stereotypes and false sensualities. And the art historian Josep Casamartina sees in the photographer's work an "elegance and discretion" that is not always exactly what magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Elle and so many others for which he has worked.
Here, then, is an Antoni Bernad who reveals to the general public the circumstances and chances that surrounded some of his iconic photographs.
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Elsa Peretti
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Loulou of the Cliff
The daughter of a French aristocrat and a British model, she was designer Yves Saint Laurent's right-hand woman. In the early 1970s—when this photo was taken—she had a love affair with architect Ricard Bofill, who was then a success in Paris. The photo was taken at the Jazz Colón in Barcelona. "In a burst of alcohol-fueled euphoria, the muse took off her white blouse and exposed her breasts." She and Bofill ended up at the police station.
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Mercè Rodoreda
Bernad was able to photograph the writer thanks to editor Josep M. Castellet: "She begged me to treat her with care because, in addition to being sensitive, she was also very unsociable." Two hours after the visit, Castellet called "in a rage." The writer had called him, upset, to tell him that "a couple of idiots" had come to photograph her and to tell him to take the photographic material and burn it. In the end, Rodoreda saw the images and apologized. "She used my photos until her death."
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Felipe de Borbón
The photo was for the Italian magazine L'Uomo Vogue. At the photo shoot in the Zarzuela Gardens, everything Bernad asked for had to be approved by two nodding military officers. Everything was very rigid: "I left the last photo on the roll untouched and, suddenly and euphorically, I exclaimed:Sir, we're done!"Then, that young man's 18 years betrayed him. Freed from the imposed obligation, he jumped, and I snapped the photo. I'd never been so bored making a portrait."
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Tina Labrador
Tina Labrador, having fun, on a bicycle in Barcelona in 1968.
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Salvador Espriu
"I told Espriu I'd like to capture a smile from him: he made a great effort to please me, but instead of a smile, he offered me an expression of suffering that my camera captured." The photo is from 1978, at Casa Fuster in Barcelona, where the poet lived.
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Pere Calders
The writer in Barcelona in 1980.
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Rosario Nadal and Valentino Garavani
The image of the Mallorcan art director and model and the Italian haute couture stylist was captured by Bernad in 1998 in Rome.
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Alfonso Milà and Federico Correa
The elegant and impeccably dressed architect couple in a 1987 photo.
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Laura Ponte
Model Laura Ponte in a 1999 photo in homage to Picasso. Bernad has also included in the book an image of Ponte in homage to Gala Dalí, also from 1999. And a third, more informal photo of her from 2002, inside an airplane.
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David Hockney
The photo was taken in the English painter's luxurious Paris apartment. In a tiny corner of the building, a piece of sausage hung from a nail and a pair of underpants hung from a string. Bernad took advantage of this "to outline the subject in an erotic key": "The filtered light of the Parisian sky allowed me to capture, without shadows, his transparent gaze, a gaze that the reflection of two large windows in the lenses of his round glasses enhanced even more."
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Gae Aulenti
Bernad became friends with the Italian architect Gae Aulenti. Along with Oriol Bohigas, Antoni Llena, and Beth Galí, Aulenti invited them many summers to his country house in Gubbio, where he read La Repubblica in the mornings and gave them homework for the evening debate. At dinner, Aulenti drank only whiskey. "He couldn't stand pretense and valued naturalness above all else. He dressed austerely, but with elegance."
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Josep Pla
When, as they had arranged, Antoni Bernad and Antoni Llena went to the farmhouse in Llofriu where he lived in the morning, Pla was still asleep. He had spent the night writing. At dusk, when he returned, he was still wearing pajama pants and slapping. "When we finished the session, he told us something that no one had ever said to us before: 'Come back whenever you want, you've been great company.'"
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Antoni Tàpies
The American art historian Barbara Rose asked Bernad for a photo of Tàpies in his studio for Vogue, a magazine that featured none other than Irving Penn. Under pressure, with the complicity of Antoni Llena, Bernad asked Tàpies to put a foot in the bucket of black paint and leave a footprint on the floor: "I was afraid of my own boldness, but he embraced it with enthusiasm, and I saw he was having a good time."