In the old world

A few weeks ago, back when going places wasn’t a big deal, S and I went to Barcelona for a few days to celebrate our anniversary. We were free to wander gently, at a breakneck pace, around the city, seeing as much as we could. We had to be selective, and travel light.

I’ve wanted to visit the Barcelona Pavilion for a really long time. Standing in it was a bigger deal for me than anything else we did on our trip. (It’s ironic, given the amount of religious architecture we saw, that seeing the Pavilion felt like an act of pilgrimage).

I’m forgiving when it comes to modernist architecture. I know that they are often paternalistic in their design and that they sometimes fail in terms of function, but I love the clarity of vision and the aspiration that comes with designing a machine for living in.

Goals

My aspirations towards modernist goals in my personal life are often thwarted by my disorganisation and shortness of time. My studio could be a beautiful and sparsely furnished white box with only what I need to hand and the space to experiment. It is in fact a cluttered mess of things I’ve just put down in order to pick something else up, combined with books and things that I just like having around.

I know I will never achieve the modernist ideal, the world is messy and unpredictable, but I think reaching for the unattainable is important.

Design

It’s hard to believe that the design for the Pavilion is nearly 100 years old. Even now it feels like it hails from some non-functional utopian future.

It was originally designed for the Barcelona International Exposition in 1929 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and stood for only 7 months before being torn down. The replica I stood in was reconstructed in the Eighties.

Having already been to the Sagrada Familia, the design museum, an amazing covered market, the beach, the cable cars, the Joan Miro Museum and the Olympic Village, we arrived late and tired.

After our other visits that day it felt oddly depopulated. Perhaps my in my excitement I had inflated other’s likely interest.

Arriving in the gap between the bookshop closing and the gate actually shutting meant that there were only a few people there. This suited its sparse, spare and open aesthetic, and meant it looked as I hoped it would look. 

Just a tourist

The obvious thing to crave was exclusive access and to have my sticks, lenses, and filters to hand. To spend some time watching the light play across the surfaces and to shoot it with a tilt-shift lens, or a super-wide, managing the sky and the reflections with filters that were in a draw in Worcester.

This was as close as exclusive access was likely to get and even if tripods were allowed (they aren’t), mine was at home. The lenses are heavy and specialised, and didn’t make the trip. The 16-35mm was what I had to work with (and that had been a last minute addition to the bag).

I think one of the reasons I wanted to see the pavilion so much is that it is an example of a perfect modernism that is both beautiful and functional. It works precisely because it isn’t supposed to have much in it.

There are a few examples of Mies van der Rohe’s work, indeed modernism in general, that managed to be beautiful, but struggled to function as intended, (I’m thinking particularly of Farnsworth House, not least because I love it so much and would hate to live in it).

I was struck by how little there was to photograph, I took loads, but having come to photograph it, felt odd to that there was so little to shoot. 

As the sun set, our feet aching, we resolved to return the next day, early, for a second viewing, for more pictures, and to buy a book from the open bookshop.

When we the returned the following morning, Dawn (Alba – Georg Kolbe) was shielding her eyes from the sun, the space was busier, I was loaded with LomoChrome Purple, and I bought a book.

Pictures below, I’ve written some notes about shooting LomoChrome Purple here, and will continue to redraft my notes about Sagrada Familia, once I’ve worked out what the hell I want to say.