Goodbye Modelo
During the summer of 2017, photographer Josep Maria de Llobet was commissioned to document Barcelona’s Modelo Prison immediately after its closure as a penitentiary. The project had a dual purpose: to record the architectural state of the building at a decisive moment of transition, and to capture the traces of time and history embedded in a space that, for more than a century, had been one of the city’s most controversial sites.
For more than one hundred years, La Modelo stood as both a physical and symbolic island within Barcelona, enclosed by imposing walls and conceived according to Jeremy Bentham’s panoptic model. This architecture was designed to create a constant sense of surveillance, allowing a single guard to observe prisoners without being seen. Beyond restricting physical freedom, the system eliminated privacy and imposed a permanent condition of visibility and vulnerability.
De Llobet’s project, Adiós Modelo, is at once a historical document and an artistic reflection. With unrestricted access to the complex, he photographed every corner of the prison: cells, corridors, courtyards, dining rooms and kitchens. Rather than seeking drama or sensationalism, his images focus on the everyday traces of confinement: worn surfaces, abandoned objects, marks on the walls and the subtle remnants of the lives that unfolded within these spaces.
Aware that the experience of imprisonment can never be fully represented, De Llobet adopts a restrained and respectful visual language. Frontal compositions, balanced framing and an apparent objectivity allow the viewer to confront the architecture directly and form their own interpretation. This formal restraint reinforces the symbolic weight of the prison and silently evokes the reality of those who lived behind its walls.
As Martí Peran, Professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory at the University of Barcelona, points out, the work goes beyond its documentary purpose. Through a meticulous analysis of the prison’s forms, volumes and spatial relationships, De Llobet exposes the “punitive mathematics” embedded within the building, transforming a factual record into a profound reflection on power, control and memory.
The project also incorporates a testimonial dimension. De Llobet interviewed former political prisoners, prison officers and directors of the institution. Their voices, integrated into the book, establish a dialogue between image and memory that enriches the visual narrative and offers a more complex and nuanced understanding of a place that continues to occupy a fundamental position in Barcelona’s collective memory.