![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/Oriol-Maspons-MNAC-1024x678.jpg\")
The structure of the exhibition: amateur Maspons and professional Maspons <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
From the\noutset it was clear to me that the exhibition should count on two major fields that would cover, on the\none hand, his practice as an amateur, and on the other hand, his professional\npractice.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was\nimportant to establish a chronology, to investigate when and how Maspons became\ninterested in photography and what led him to decide that he wanted to dedicate\nhimself to it professionally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The abundant documentary material, randomly\ngathered together without any order in 40 boxes which were the property of his\nson \u00c1lex Maspons, constituted the starting point of my research.<\/strong> With the help of the staff of the\nmuseum, I started separating and chronologically ordering the articles,\ninterviews, magazines, books, diaries, letters, typed texts, posters, professional\nmembership cards, etc. In addition to the documentary material we also found\nphotographs from his first period as an amateur and also an illustrated\nacademic work with images and a personal photographic album carried out between\n1946 and 1949. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I carefully\nread his articles published in the magazine Arte Fotogr\u00e1fico<\/em><\/a>, in the magazine AFAL<\/em><\/a> and in the Bolet\u00edn de la Agrupaci\u00f3nFotogr\u00e1fica de Catalu\u00f1a<\/em><\/a>. I also read all the interviews that I found that had been published in\nspecialized and general interest magazines, I looked for live interviews that\nhad been carried out for television and other audiovisual media, and finally I\nread texts that had been written about him by Josep Maria Casademont<\/a>, Lluis Permanyer<\/a>, Alexandre Ciri Pellicer<\/a> and David Balsells, former conservator of\nphotography of the Museu Nacional, all of them being people who either knew him\nwell or had worked with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading all\nthese materials allowed me to understand the fact that for Maspons the photography that he was interested in, <\/strong>above all in\nhis extensive and diverse professional practice which began in 1957 together\nwith Julio Ubi\u00f1a, was what he himself\ncalled the useful photography, whose ultimate aim was the printed page<\/strong>. That\nis to say, the photography applied to reportage, advertising, fashion or\npublishing illustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seemed\nevident to me that the exhibition\ncouldn\u2019t be limited to <\/strong>exhibiting the\nmost successful, personal, flashy or novel photographs<\/strong>. It was important to\ncontextualize his works, both the ones he took as an amateur \u2013 to determine the\nframework in which they were produced and the influences received \u2013 as well as\nthe ones produced when commissioned by different types of clients in the\ndevelopment of his professional practice. \n As such, the next step was to locate the final product of his\nphotographs: covers of books, record covers, advertisements, reportages for\nillustrated magazines, and illustrated books with his photographs. <\/strong> This\nmeant hours and hours looking through the newspaper archive, checking the Gaceta Ilustrada<\/em>, Destino<\/em>, Triunfo<\/em>, Intervi\u00fa<\/em>, Cuadernos de Arquitectura<\/em> and Serra\nd\u2019Or,<\/em> amongst others. But also visits\nto the Mercat de Sant Antoni, to the second-hand records and books shops, or\nconsulting in the net of webpages such as Todo Colecci\u00f3n or Iberlibro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was only\nfrom this point on that I began to delve into the digitizations of the 7,000\nphotographs deposited in the National Museum, in order to reconstruct the published reports, the sets of still photos for\ndifferent films, the photographs used for advertising or those that had been\nused to illustrate books.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the\nimages had been identified, I dedicated myself, always with the help of the\nmuseum staff, towards looking at and selecting the originals for the\nexhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After\nselecting the exhibition material, both the photographs as well as the documents\nof all kinds, I began working on setting it up, that is to say, on how to exhibit\nthis material in an intelligible form, on how\nto make the contextualized work of Maspons accessible to the viewer<\/strong>. During\nthis stage of the process, the close collaboration with Santiago de Le\u00f3n, who\nwas in charge of the museographic design, and also with La Japonesa, the\ndesigners who produced the graphics, was fundamental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is\nevident that an exhibition of this magnitude is only possible by working as a\nteam. And in this case many people from inside and outside the museum have\ntaken part, to whom I am very grateful. It is impossible to mention all of them,\nbut I would like to name two of them without whose support and professionalism\nit would have been impossible for me to bring this project to fruition: Roser\nCambray, who has been my right hand in all the research and selection of the\nmaterial, and Ana Izquierdo, who was responsible for coordinating the\nexhibition. And of course, Pepe Serra, director of the museum, who trusted in me\nto curate this great retrospective about Oriol Maspons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Topic guide “Oriol Maspons, useful photography \/ 1949-1995”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/Maspons-fotografia-\u00fatil-1024x733.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/Oriol-Maspons-material-gr\u00e0fic-1024x689.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\nThe useful photography: the works of Maspons in context<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/Maspons-fotografia-\u00fatil-1-1024x733.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSetting up the exhibition<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/Muntatge-exposici\u00f3-Maspons-1024x681.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/making-of-Oriol-maspons-1024x766.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Oriol](\"https:\/\/blog.museunacional.cat\/wp-content\/uploads\/Maspons-exhibition-Barcelona-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nRelated links<\/h3>\n\n\n\n