DESIGNING AND BUILDING UP THE SELF-IMAGE OF A CITY.
THE CATALAN PHOTOGRAPHIC MOVEMENT OF THE SIXTIES

The aim of this paper is to present the work done during the sixties in Barcelona about Barcelona as a city. At that moment, some photographers developed a project devoted to the representation of towns through photographic pictures that resulted in a self-representation and self-understanding of Barcelona as a town. The paper proposes a historical revision of that team’s work understanding what has been their contribution to the local town life and reality, and through it, to grasp Barcelona’s self-image and, at the same time, to discover international influences concerning photographic as a visual art and a graphic mean of communication existing in those works. There will be considered things such as the dominant trend existing everywhere at that moment, trying to show what has been its adaptation to a local reality and so, its contribution to the main stream of work in a feedback process. At last, there will be the local culture and the community life what will be really worth when what is at stake is to build up icons and visual symbols where the town sees clearly reflected its idea of itself. The aim is to balance contributions done from a periphery basis to build up a model of reference of its own in front of the dominant international model though a constant dialogue between them.

The paper will also reflect about the ways images are build and its constitutive elements especially when a peculiar project gives the idea through which a town self-image is disposed and becomes a visual discourse.