2022 marks one hundred years since the birth in Valls, Tarragona, of one of the leading figures in Spanish photography: Francesc Català-Roca. The book celebrating his centenary brings together around 150 images, some previously unpublished and others iconic, selected especially for this publication.
A journey through the history of a photographer who portrayed the leading figures of the bohemian and cultural life of his time in an immense documentary record of urban and rural life, while capturing the social, political and cultural world around him like no one else. A photographer who revolutionised street photography with iconic images of everyday reality.
Francesc Català-Roca was born in 1922. Both the son and the father of photographers, his work in the forties, fifties and sixties marked the emergence of a new street photography in Spain, comparable to Henri Cartier Bresson or Robert Doisneau. He travelled across Spain for half a century and portrayed the transition from a rural to an urban world. With his camera, he created a unique record that he carefully preserved in an archive of more than two hundred thousand negatives. In 1983 he won the National Award for Visual Arts, becoming the first photographer to receive this recognition.
