It was in 2015 when art gallery owner Artur Ramon turned what was then his commercial home, in the heart of the Gòtic, into a reborn ‘cabinet de curiosités’ or, in German, which is more impressive, a ‘wunderkammer’. He exhibited there even a stuffed gorilla that they say she dazzled the ‘most beautiful animal in the world’ (that’s what they called her), Ava Gardner, that one day when she was walking through the Plaza Reial. Eight years after that celebrated cultural eccentricity, the Ramon, Artur and Mònica, host in their new headquarters (Bailèn, 19) a superb exhibition that, although entitled ‘Domus Barcino’, what it actually does is invite visitors to attend to a lesson in real estate anatomy, to witnessing an almost forensic dissection of the city’s noblest floors as its elderly residents bid farewell to this world. For 20 years, the antique dealer and photographer Jordi Baron has photographed these homes in the brief interregnum that occurs after the relatives of the deceased have taken the memories of sentimental and economic value, and before the apartment is going to be completely emptied in a last moveprior to its sale and, many times, divided into two or three apartments.
‘Domus Barcino’ It is a photographic exhibition of unique moments, yes, but it is something more, perhaps an invitation to take a dizzy look at the metamorphosis of Barcelona. There are, on the one hand, the scenes framed by Baron, among other facets, a photographer and, little is known, one of the largest collectors of old daguerreotypes in the city. And on the other hand, there is the captivating ‘mise en scène’ provided by the Ramons, pieces from their collection that will accompany the photographs until July 28 in the gallery. What things? For example, those engravings by Piranesi that ghostly recreated what was left standing of the ruins of Ancient Rome in the middle of the 18th century, a work that caused a furor in its time and that, they say, helped give birth to romanticism a century later. and inspired the iconography of terror in the first steps of cinema in the 20th century. It can be said, to say the least, of Baron’s photos that they are truly Piranesian, portraits that there, on those floors, there was a spooky past, and, in their own way, also inspiring what is to come, which in this case is not It seems that it is going to be a new wave of romanticism, but it is of social terror.
Each photograph is simply titled with a postal address, such and such a street and such a number, and probably no trace remains in that place today of what the image shows. It is convenient here, before continuing, to dedicate a moment to the context or, rather, to the ‘making of’.
Namely. Three days a week, as soon as the sun rises, the belongings of those who left us (their furniture, their bookshelves, their lamps, the memories of their travels, the framed photos of the wedding day and of the grandchildren, the collection of owls, fans or pitchers, depending on the case…), all of this always in complete lots that are exhibited in front of a whirlwind of people bidding upwards. Going there is a life lesson, believe it, sometimes lives for less than 1,000 euros, but there is (said with all due respect) an aristocracy of that goodbye liturgypeople like Baron and other colleagues in his antiquities guild who have access to the most stately estates in (above all) the Eixample.
In 20 years, Baron has witnessed what he calls “the ‘photo-finish’ of a bourgeois memory& rdquor;, witness to how houses that for more than 100 years were enviable will contribute, in an invisible way, because it cannot be seen from the street, to the drama of gentrification. On occasions, the photos were taken a few days after their residents passed away, when the inheritance envelope has already been opened and their relatives decide that it would be best to put the property up for sale, empty, of course.
Other times, if there are disagreements or simply because there is no economic urgency involved, he accesses the apartments after they have been months or years fallow, which adds a plus of decadent Piranesian makeup to the scene. And one of the pluses of the exhibition is that Baron has made use of his oceanic collection of old photographs and has selected a few from the beginning of the 20th century that show How were houses like those when those bourgeois families took possession of the Eixample.
It’s not easy to fall in love with just one of Baron’s works. Of course, there is something irresistible about that one that only shows a wall of wallpaper, white and patterned, in which, even empty, absolutely bare of furniture, the entire room, it is unmistakably intuited that it was a bedroom for decades. The headboard of the bed, the bedside tables and the crucifix and a ‘king size’ rosary are gone, but the shadow of their silhouettes remains as if the entire wall had been a giant emulsion of silver salts and that was a photograph taken with the technique of a very long exposure. Of decades.
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But more evocative are those other photographs in which the floors look like the Aqaba looted by the ‘howeitats’ before the complacent gaze of Lawrence of Arabia. The war comparison is not free. The war journalist refers to this, the landscape after the battle, in the exhibition catalogue. Placid Garcia-Planas, a benchmark in this matter. He explains that Baron, in his role as a collector, discovered for him the figure of one of the pioneers of war photography, roger fentonwho in 1855 traveled to the Crimean War and witnessed the charge of the British light cavalry against the Russian soldiery.
“In the photograph of Crimea there are cannonballs, but no human body. No corpse. Only absence is photographed. As in the empty halls of Barcelona, we only see the stage where humans have exercised their humanity& rdquor;, says García-Planas. It is a perfect conclusion. If we add to that the theatricality provided by Artur Ramon’s gallery, it becomes clear that ‘Domus Barcino’ is an unavoidable exhibition.