The words of an irritated Secretary of State for Culture, Mr. José María Lassalle, still echo in my ears, spoken in the Congress of Deputies, regarding the lamentable state of funding for Catalan cultural institutions: How can it be that in Catalonia, with such a vigorous business sector, there are no sponsorships? Accurate, yes. But after the fact. No one, not even Mr. Lassalle himself, made any mention of the long-awaited Patronage Law, which has been locked away in a drawer for over two years, and whose key seems to have been lost in one of the pockets of the Jacobin Mr. Lassalle’s suit.
And from one drawer to another. Under the door of my studio, I observed an eye staring fixedly at me. It was Pep Escoda’s eye reproduced on a delicate invitation, informing me of the opening of his photography exhibition at the Fundació Caixa Tarragona. The inaugural event of the SCAN festival, “The Drawer of Dreams” is the title of various photography collections selected from his generous archive by Silvia Omedes, the exhibition curator. Each of these collections has a highly significant title:
– Architecture of the Void
– Excavated Lands
– Havana
– Romania
– Travel Notebook
– Inside Tarragona
– and Guaites.
The meticulous arrangement of the work and its precise format are striking. Portraits, these figures, at times placid, at times unsettling, observing us through time. Landscapes exuberant with greenery, contrasted with desolate urban landscapes, and urban landscapes where life pulsates passionately, without needing to be made evident. Human warmth pulsates behind windowpanes, behind a wall, even behind a closed door. Pep Escoda, I believe, has traveled around the world on his many journeys, almost always for commissioned work, and at other times, of course, for pleasure. Always accompanied by the Mediterranean that witnessed his birth, in the Serrallo neighborhood of Tarragona. Varadero, Saint Petersburg, Lekeitio, San Sebastián, Paris, Berlin, Miami, New York, and others. Black and white. A rigorous, high-caliber classic, with at times brilliant attention to the fragile range of grays. And color, always so perilous in photography, finds here the right balance between its presence, its function, and the composition to which it belongs.
It was drizzling when I left the exhibition hall, which, incidentally, was packed to capacity. I left with two photographs imprinted in my memory: “Theater and classroom of the old fishermen’s guildhall” – Serrallo. And the black and white eyes of a Romanian girl that reminded me of Edith Piaf’s in 1910. And so, while one drawer remains tightly shut. Another, that of dreams, generously open, reveals its treasures to all who approach it, with an open heart.
