Escenas de la vida del pueblo (Scenes of Village Life)

Xavier Miserachs

Barcelona, Spain, 1937 - Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998
  • Series: 
    Costa Brava Show
  • Date: 
    1964 (circa) / Vintage print
  • Technique: 
    Gelatin silver print on paper
  • Dimensions: 
    Full bleed image: 21,4 x 30,3 cm
  • Category: 
    Photography
  • Entry date: 
    2010
  • Register number: 
    AD06183

Costa Brava Show (1966) is a photo-book by the photographer Xavier Miserachs, also the author of Barcelona. Blanc i negre (1964), another urban photo-book that travels paths opened up by William Klein. Miserachs claims that in Costa Brava Show “the incorporation of Pop Art elements is obvious, because this is an aesthetic movement that absolutely fascinated me.” And it is true that the subject matter really could not be more perfect for Pop Art: firstly, there is what Manuel Vázquez Montalbán describes as “the paradise of leisure”, secondly “the party (that) is the most baroque display of that leisure time” and finally a “peculiar eroticism”, noted by Josep Pla, who wrote introduction and claims that the photographs are “the best ever taken of what is known as the Costa Brava.” Basically, this is mass tourism as experienced and presented by Miserachs with excellent humour in 155 colour and black and white photographs, covering all the clichés and presaging the globalisation awaiting us all.

Horacio Fernández

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