Mirades Paral·leles: La Fotografia Realista a Itàlia i Espanya is an ambitious and beautifully conceived survey of one of the most important periods in European photography. Published by the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in 2006, the book brings together the photographic visions that emerged in Spain and Italy from the postwar years through the 1960s, revealing striking parallels between two societies undergoing reconstruction, migration, industrialisation and profound social change.
Rather than presenting a conventional history of individual photographers, the book creates a dialogue between images. Spanish and Italian photographers are placed alongside one another, allowing similarities and differences to emerge naturally through the photographs themselves. The result is particularly compelling because the connections are not always obvious: a street in Barcelona can suddenly feel remarkably close to Naples, Madrid can echo Milan, and the everyday lives of people on opposite sides of the Mediterranean appear to belong to the same visual and emotional landscape.
The Spanish contribution is especially important, bringing together figures such as Oriol Maspons, Ricard Terré, Xavier Miserachs, Ramón Masats, Joan Colom and Francesc Català-Roca, whose photographs challenged the more conservative photographic traditions of the period. Their Italian counterparts reveal a parallel development of socially engaged realism, shaped by the experience of postwar Italy and by the influence of neorealist cinema and literature.
What makes the book particularly powerful is its attention to ordinary life. Streets, markets, religious celebrations, workers, children, poverty, prostitution, migration and rapidly changing urban environments become the raw material for a photography that is direct without being merely documentary. These photographers were not simply recording their surroundings; they were constructing a new way of looking at society.
The catalogue is also an important document of the relationship between Spanish and Italian photography at a crucial moment in the history of the medium. With its substantial selection of photographs and extensive accompanying texts, Mirades Paral·leles offers both historical depth and an extraordinarily rich visual experience.
For anyone interested in postwar European photography, Spanish photography of the 1950s and 1960s, Italian neorealism or the emergence of modern documentary photography, this is a remarkable Photography Book. It is also an essential title for understanding the generation that transformed the photographic language of everyday life in Spain.
