Craigie Horsfield. The City of the People

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies is exhibiting over fifty photographs by Craigie Horsfield (Cambridge, 1949), all of them specially taken in Barcelona and illustrating concepts and history: the identities of a variety of individuals and communities that make up the city, and their own particular memories and experiences.

Through his photographs of the people and places of Barcelona, Horsfield attempts to describe human relations in the city, revealing their basic structure to the viewer. For Horsfield, photography is partly responsible for shaping our perceptions and our awareness of the real world and the changes it is undergoing.

Horsfield’s work is part of a project that involved not only close collaboration between the artist and the two curators, but also included a number of other groups working in and for Barcelona. Economists, anthropologists and architects have contributed their particular visions of the city, enriching the process that went into creating these photographs. The anonymous inhabitants photographed by Horsfield also played an active part in this process, explaining their personal life experiences and identifying what they feel to be the most significant features of their surroundings. Special attention is paid to three of Barcelona’s outlying neighborhoods: Ciutat Meridiana, Vallbona and Torre Baró. Nevertheless, the exhibition as a whole provides an unusual and broad view of the people and places that make up the city.

Horsfield works painstakingly on every print until he achieves the desired effect, using large formats that cause an impact from which the viewer cannot easily escape.