Barcelona,
He is determined that noise does not disturb his imagessaid Chema Conesa of Ramón Masats. That is why the retrospective that the Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona is now offering him, just a few months after his death, is called “The Silent Photographer.” Curated by Pepe Font de Mora, it brings together 140 snapshots, some belonging to well-known series, such as Las Ramblas either Neutral Cornerand other unpublished ones, including originals of his book dedicated to the Sanfermines and several early works.
Born in Caldes de Montbui in 1931 and settled in Madrid in 1957, Masats became one of the greats of the camera in Spain in the sixties thanks to his instinct, his ability to show features of post-war society and culture, combining criticism and irony and also for his free temperament; Linked to innovative movements such as the Photographic Group of Catalonia, La Palangana (germ of the later Madrid School) or AFAL, he initially worked for newspapers that were beginning to give importance to this medium, such as Illustrated Gazette, Spanish News, Up either Alreadyuntil for more than a decade, between 1965 and the arrival of democracy, he put photography aside to focus on film and television. He developed in diverse fields, from documentaries, such as The one who teaches; the series, like Get to know Spain and Roots; and the feature film Topical Spanish (1970). That 1957, in any case, would be a relevant year: it was then that he showed his work for the first time, together with Xavier Miserachs and Ricard Terré, within the framework of the Catalan Photographic Group, and although the criticism was cold if not disdainful, that exhibition ended up being a milestone for photographic modernization in Spain.
From that first period we can see original period copies in Barcelona that prove Masats’ desire to experiment and his tendency towards content close to reportage or abstraction, which would explain his later path. Already in his very early compositions made on excursions around Barcelona it is possible to detect his desire to find beauty in the simplest and most everyday enclaves, even in those most theoretically distant from any plastic quality: he considered that, the more humble his motive, the Better results could be offered by visual sublimation. At this start of the tour we will see fifteen wonderful vintages that the Catalan grouped together in what was his first series: Las Ramblashis first proposal with thematic unity, composed of loose glances, visual discoveries; It was not its purpose to document the best-known street in Barcelona from realism (it must be emphasized that all the negatives and copies that make up the exhibition were reviewed by the author, so we know – and it is a rare circumstance among Spanish photographers – that they were approved by him and that meet his selection criteria). Nearby are works that were part of the aforementioned publication. Neutral Cornerwhich was accompanied with texts by Ignacio Aldecoa, both hard and concise, and from those Sanfermineshis first photobook as such, laid out and the images selected by the artist.
We can consider it his most ambitious project up to that moment: without prior documentation, he wanted to address an issue surrounded by clichés and he did so by accentuating the light, the irony, in soft and nuanced tones, consistent with the party. Later he would continue returning to Pamplona and photographing these celebrations from different perspectives, but those first images, which he chose to edit in a dynamic and fresh way, opened the doors of the capital to him.

We also owe Masats the photographs that accompany Old stories from Old Castile by Delibes, in his 1964 edition of Lumen. He took them from where the writer had been inspired, in Tierra de Campos, but without basing them on specific texts or characters, without yearning for literal illustration. In fact, if Delibes accentuates the nostalgia and tenderness that those places arouse in him, in the Catalan there is no room for melancholy or bucolism: he focuses on the hardness of work in the fields, social stagnation or old women always in mourning.
Neither Masats nor most of the photographers of his generation, despite encountering censorship and exercising self-censorship as much or more often, turned their work into a tool of political denunciation; They were not activists, this does not imply that their production lacks social readings, in the case of this author, packaged in a humor more or less close to satire. An irony that never applied, on the other hand, to the simplest people.

The Foundation does not lack images taken from his series in Arcos de la Frontera, the portraits of athletes, artists or actors that he carried out for various media outlets – he imposed his gaze on every assignment – and those scenes, widely publicized or not. so much so that they prove that, over the decades, Masats became one of the chroniclers of his time who most wisely knew how to distance himself from stereotypes, link documentary and aesthetic value, and approach, deflating clichés, to ordinary people. A keen observer, he paid attention to both the work sphere and moments of leisure, rural and urban environments, traditional customs and religious rites and the advent of lifestyles more attached to consumption.
The center of his interest was, in any case, human stories, whether he worked in black and white or, starting in the eighties, in color; The latter allowed him to access new possibilities in storytelling through images, as we can see in his books published in Lunwerg. diverse Spain (1984), From heaven. Spain (1989), Bull (1998) and The built memory (2002).
Respectful of his discipline (he did not fall into manipulation) and of the public (he never wanted to offend or hurt, beyond his sarcastic disposition), he fled both from solemnity and from the accessory: he wanted to condense the features that defined the subjects, reach a synthesis image.


“Ramón Masats. The silent photographer
PHOTO COLECTANIA FOUNDATION
C/ Passeig Picasso, 14
Barcelona
From January 16 to May 25, 2025