The Work.
Three subjects run through the selection: the port at work, the ships that passed through it, and life on the quay.
Labour, painting and the shape of the port
The waterfront is the most heavily worked subject in the archive. The pictures record stevedores, painters set up at the quay with their easels, boatmen — and the architecture itself: the Tinglados sheds, the cranes, the loading bays of a working port.
Sailing ships, ocean liners, the silhouette of the city
Rigging keeps reappearing as a compositional device. A bowsprit frames the Columbus Monument. Shrouds cut against the sky. A white hull doubles in the water. Alongside the sailing ships, the merchant vessels and the ocean liners that called at Barcelona through the 1950s and 1960s.
Scenes, trades, passage
A group of pictures records the daily life of the quay: passengers, sailors, brief encounters, the port at first light before work begins. The camera does not chase the incident. It waits for it.
"These images are published in low resolution, watermarked and embedded with metadata. Reproduction is subject to written authorisation."