“It is essential for an architect to look. Not only to look, but to see. Like photographers, who are the great masters of seeing.”
Álvaro Siza
From Wednesday, 31st July, the Toni Catany International Photography Centre presents a new exhibition: “Fotografia i Arquitectura. Col·lecció Josep Lluís Mateo” (Photography and Architecture. Josep Lluís Mateo Collection), a selection from the private collection of the architect in charge of the CIFTC.
The exhibition will open to the public on the 31st at 7 p.m. and at 7.30 p.m. There will be a presentation and guided tour of the exhibition by the CIFTC’s Public Programmes team. The exhibition will be open to the public until 15th September during the CIFTC’s regular opening hours.
The relationship between architecture and photography goes back to the very origins of the history of photography. Architecture is present (and even the focus) in the work of the pioneers: Niépce, Talbot, Daguerre, and even in the first photograph taken in Spain by Ramon Alabern (1839).
Photography is a witness and a mirror to the changes and impact that architecture and urban planning have on the landscape and society and, more than a simple document, it becomes a tool for reflection and analysis. This trend is clearly manifested in the work of the main exponents of architectural photography in recent decades, some of whom are present in the Collection of Josep Lluís Mateo that we now present: Manolo Laguillo, Camilo José Vergara, Humberto Rivas and Andreas Gursky, among others.
This exhibition consists of 23 works from the Josep Lluís Mateo Collection, with photographs by Jordi Bernadó, Francesc Català-Roca, Toni Catany, Josep Antoni Coderch, John Davis, Ferran Freixa, Andreas Gursky, Jaume Huch i Guixer, Manolo Laguillo, Ana Muller, Pedro Pegenaute, Humberto Rivas, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jon Tugores and Camilo José Vergara, as well as two engravings by Giovanni Batista Piranesi.
JOSEP LLUÍS MATEO
Barcelona, 1949
Architect by the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB), doctor cum laude by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and emeritus professor at the EHT (Zurich), he was director of the magazine Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme between 1981 and 1990.
He is responsible for works such as the conversion of the Can Felipa factory into the Poblenou Civic Centre, the Barcelona International Convention Centre, the headquarters of the Landeszentralbank in Chemnitz (Germany), the headquarters of the Filmoteca de Catalunya and the Toni Catany International Photography Centre.
His international and local work, which covers a wide range of typologies – from office buildings and housing to public space and urban planning – has won numerous awards and has been widely published and exhibited.
Domus magazine recently included his studio among the top 100 in the world and in 2022 his book Huellas (Park Books, Zurich, 2020) won the Juanzong Archive (China) author of the year award.
