“Doesn’t anyone notice? Doesn’t anyone complain?” I’m often asked these questions when people see my photos of passengers. I understand them, to some extent. Even though the spaces where we photograph are public, the moments are intimate. In the madness of urban overcrowding, we seek intimacy in the anonymity of the crowd. Observing that space seems unsettling to those who consider it private. It is assumed that other passengers are not interested in their companions either, that everyone shares the unspoken rule of non-existence within the same space… Perhaps it is more of a shared non-perception, a self-imposed blindness. If we didn’t carry cameras but looked with the same presence that this book has when looking through our eyes, we would likely face the same issue—a transgression. Someone might smile, yes… but they would be the exception.
Passengers Vol. III concludes the trilogy with photographs taken between 2013 and 2015. The book features 42 images by 12 authors, selected from an initial pool of 7,515 images by 71 photographers. The first selection round took over a year. Editors could vote to accept an image as part of the new book through an individual online process. After so much selection work, we weren’t sure if we could create another book with a cohesive thread… until we saw the images chosen by the four editors together. It was a surprise to find coherence among those seven thousand photos and between the four of us. The second, third, and fourth rounds of editing were done in person, working with around 300 printed photographs.
Transmedia participative project: app, book collection, video and exhibition.
Traces is a collective project that provides a chance to experience a dérive [literally: “drifting”, a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances] and verify its capacity to document urban space from different perspectives while using a common methodology and creating a psychogeographical map of Barcelona.
Passengers is a website as well as a series of street photography books about the passengers who use public transport.
The project was developed as a web participatory concept. All of the images were captured with mobile devices and
published on Instagram. The website gives a real time look at participation while the books are a visual contemplation
about public transport passengers, mobile device aesthetics and street photography.
Participative Processes on the Web: Making of Passengers 2012
We thought it would be interesting to explain how this book was developed. Barcelona Photobloggers have been producing
participative web projects since 2006, some of them in collaboration with important cultural entities of Barcelona city.
We’ve often noticed interest in our approach to work and organization.
In writings, two types of participative processes are distinguished. Some call them participatory art and some –
participatory projects. We make the same distinction, but we call them participatory and collaborative processes.
The newspapers El Periódico, La Vanguardia and El País have written articles about the Circuit 2013 and all of them include mentions of the fotometro.org project, with which Barcelona Photobloggers participates in this festival dedicated to documentary photography and photojournalism.
Participants capture, edit and publish their pictures using their phones and they are instantly displayed in the
exhibition (inreal-time) emphasizing the immediacy aspect.
The exhibition will be simultaneously held in different cities around the world, in very diverse and distant locations,
making the exhibition ubiquitous.
Although iPhoneography might seem to be about a group of addicted fans and technobuffs who cannot stop using their
mobile phone, it is in reality the continuation of a trend that began with the advent of the Kodak Brownie in February
1900 and has been developing since then.
The Kodak Brownie is recognised as the beginning of photography for the masses and with it was born the term “snapshot”:
a photograph taken quickly without thinking, without any artistic or documentary intent, usually blurry, badly framed
and in which the subject is usually a scene from everyday life, such as birthdays, sunsets, pets or travel.
Passengers is a street photography project, in both web and book series form, about anonymous public transport
passengers. It’s designed as a participative online project. All the images are captured by mobile devices and published
on Instagram. The site is a “real-time view” of the participation process. The book is a visual meditation on public
transport passengers and the aesthetics of street photography using mobile devices.
The newspaper El Periódico has written an article about the project “Brangulí was here. And you?" promoted by Barcelona Photobloggers and CCCB. Thank you very much!
Project “Arrinconado” (Cornered) starts a new era for Barcelona Photobloggers. The objective was to create a
collaborative project with a horizontal organization in which all of the members would have an opportunity to
participate in every aspect of creation, from definition to production, and which would lead to a work authored by the
group and not by a gathering of various authors in the same space.
In the workshop
Living from Photography in the 21st Century the need to expand talks related to online marketing and social networks was felt. We thought we could continue the topic with an informal talk bringing together professional photographers on one side and marketing and social network experts on the other.
I prepared a very basic
script so that all speakers would know where to go. Unlike a course there would be no examples, nor recipes for how to create a profile on social network “a” or “b”. The intention was to convey a series of basic marketing ideas.
El programa Infodia de Barcelona Televisió ha emès un petit reportatge sobre l’exposició “Al Detall” organitzada per Barcelona Photobloggers i Maremagnum. Moltes gràcies!
On my way to the
talk I was thinking “the Cartier‑Bresson drag again, is there no one else to talk about?” but since the speaker was Pepe Baeza I decided to go and it was worth it, the presentation was engaging and the topic made me review everything I think about photography. The fascination that everyone seems to have for Henri Cartier‑Bresson has made me tired. Is photography just an instant?
William Klein said a photographer’s life is a few seconds, the sum of hundreds of moments at 1/125 s. How many photographs do you get to know from a photographer? I wondered how much you know about their life in 1 second, 2…?
“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”
Cardinal de Retz
I have always felt a passion for painting. As a child, I painted on Thursdays and Sundays, and on other days I dreamed of painting. I had a Brownie camera like many children, but I only used it occasionally to fill small albums with my holiday memories. It was much later that I began to learn to look through the device; my little world widened and holiday photographs contributed to that purpose.
Since its origins photography has not changed except in its technical aspects, which, in my opinion, are not of great importance.
Photography seems like an easy activity; it is a diverse and ambiguous operation in which the only common denominator among those who practice it is the tool used. What comes out of that camera is not alien to the economy of a world of wastefulness, where tensions are increasingly intense and where ecological consequences are already disproportionate.
El programa Hola Barcelona de Barcelona Televisió ha emès un reportatge sobre l’exposició “elements” organitzada per Barcelona Photobloggers i Maremagnum. Moltes gràcies!
The ADN newspaper has written an article about the exhibition “From the Network to the Wall II” organized by Barcelona Photobloggers and the Fotonauta gallery. Thank you very much!
Barcelona Photobloggers leaves the online world again to present its second group exhibition titled “From the Network to the Wall II” on January 17 at 8:30 p.m. A total of 34 photobloggers from the Barcelona area will display their photographs at the Fotonauta gallery until February 8.
On Saturday, October 13, an article about “Virtual Photo Albums” was published in the Diari de Terrassa, featuring an interview with Marcelo who talks about who we are, what we do, and a bit about the Voltants project.
In recent years, the phenomenon of photoblogs, an extension of the blog culture where photography is the center of attention, has been acquiring adepts on the internet. Around this phenomenon, online communities in various cities around the world, Barcelona among them, have sprung up as a meeting place for the photobloggers.
Barcelona Photobloggers come out of the online world to present their first collective exhibition entitled
“De la red a la pared” on October 19 at 20:30. A total of 22 photobloggers from Barcelona area will exhibit more than 300 photographs at the
Fotonauta gallery until November 9.
December 7, 2019
