Projecte Vestibulària (anglés)




In 2003 I began photographing barcelonian buildings lobbies. The image that started this mania is just in the building where my parents live, a house built in 1962 in Teodora Lamadrid st. In the lobby, there was -still is- a ceramic panel representing a prehistoric hunting scene in a Altamira or Lascaux's painting style, a decoration that had always been there since my childhood. One day, I realized how odd it was, to have choosen for decorate a twentieth's century building, a subject that was so similar to what our ancestors painted inside their caves 20,000 years ago. Was the builder a joker? Or maybe the decorator was a subversive, shabby or an ultraconsevative taste art historian? And then, I thought: there would be more houses like that? I stok my nose in other buildings of the same period and I found a world full of decorated spaces that passed unnoticed in the same way it was for me for so many years the neocave art decoration of my parent's house.


The result of this research is this repertoire : the pictures and the information that transmits to us . Information about fashion and popular aesthetics , about the invisibility of lobbys , receptions and entrances,  about developers and neighbors pretensions, about now missing trades at a time when the booming economy favored the participation of artisans , and also about an aesthetic daring , sometimes bizarre , and even courageous in their ugliness , that can surprises us now . The chosen works can be pleasent, ridiculous , pretentious , fun , innocent ...


This collection is also a witness .  Almost all  buildings belong to the period from 1960 to the early 80s . Some of these " scenery spaces " have disappeared or have been modified , mutilated or removed when the neighbors thought it was necessary to update the look .

As for the authors, we can find diverse types. From artists like Joan Vilacasas and his magnificent " Planimetries "  ,  sculptors as Josep Maria Subirachs,  photographers as Catalan - Roca, to unknown artisans . The works are varied and I ordered them by topics , techniques and districts.

And now, about the technique : the camera , the lighting , the dark - but not the composition - belong to the genre of " Guerrilla photography ," or if you prefer to a  " humble photography " rather than to the scintillating quality of the architectural photography . So I ask the reader for being benevolent about the insidious of scarcity.

And finally , I certify that this is an independent project with no funding or facilities , or assistance of any kind, material or spiritual .


Jordi Avià Faure