Joan Colom - El Raval
16 March to 20 May 2007

Foam presents the first exhibition of work by Joan Colom in the Netherlands in ‘El Raval’. Spanish photographer Joan Colom (b. 1921, Barcelona) wandered every weekend for three years around Barcelona’s Red Light district, El Raval.

From 1958 to 1961, armed with a Rollei camera that he wore discretely about his hip, Colom photographed the black-and-white world of everyday life among the prostitutes, jobless and children of the poorest neighbourhood in Barcelona. The result is a photographic essay of immense historical, sociological and documentary value.  

Joan Colom had only been photographing for a year when he began his El Raval series in 1958. While working as a bookkeeper, he joined Catalonia’s leading photography club. Along with several other innovative photographers, Colom focused on a new style of photography that ignored the accepted conventions of the time. They rejected the aesthetic mannerist style in favour of a stark presentation of reality, in all its harsh intensity. Using a snapshot technique reminiscent of work by contemporaries such as William Klein and Robert Frank, Colom captured the people of El Raval as they flirted, played and negotiated. His raw black-and-white photos reveal the mysterious and intriguing atmosphere of the area, interspersed with the flagrant sexuality and subtle self-assurance of the prostitutes.

In the puritan Spain of Franco’s day a place like El Raval, a symbol of vice and fantasy, was largely avoided and ignored. Colom’s aim was to restore the neighbourhood as part of the city through his photography. At the same time, Colom felt personally liberated by photographing in El Raval. His photos are therefore both a social document and a record of his own personal emancipation. 

In 1961 Joan Colom showed his ‘El Raval’ series for the first time in an exhibition at the Aixelà in Barcelona, after which it travelled throughout Spain. In 1964 the photos appeared in book form, in ‘Izas, Rabizas y Colipoterras’. The Franco regime was far from enthusiastic about this provocative publication. Joan Colom stopped photographing as a result of the controversy surrounding the book. It was not until the 1980s that he returned to the camera. In recent years Colom’s photography has received increasing international attention. In 2002 he won the Spanish National Prize for Photography and in 2006 he exhibited outside of Spain for the first time in collaboration with Museum Folkwang and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. 

This exhibition was made possible with the support of Fundación privada Foto Colectania.

Foam is sponsored by Stichting DOEN, T-Mobile and VandenEnde Foundation.