The Photogenic City

Barcelona, as a typically modern city, can be explored through the technological advances that go hand in hand with modernity. In this way, photography can provide an insight into the growth of the city, as this exhibition at La Virreina Image Centre illustrates.

This exhibition, comprising almost 1,000 works, explores the iconographic photography of the city’s urban development across one and a half centuries of history, through the eyes of Jorge Ribalta, artist, critic and independent curator. We can see these changes through the eyes of artist, critic and curator Jorge Ribalta, who guides us through the transformation the city experienced from the 1888 World Fair to the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures.

The exhibition also shows the historic role of photography in shaping public opinion and the general perception of the city in a period running from the emergence of multiple forms of photography technology in the 1850s to the explosion of digital technologies, the Internet, mobile telephony and social media at the turn of the 21st century.