Tag Archives: Maresme

Green behind bars

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One of the oldest streets of Arenys de Mar is the “carrer de l’església” or church’s street. It was opened about the XVI century.

Even though the construction boom of the 70th seriously damaged the street aesthetics, today is still crowded with century old houses. One of this old houses is the priest residence.

The history tells that the original priest residence was next to the church, but the building was heavy damaged during the Spanish civil war. After the conflict, during the military dictatorship, the town council bought the actual house and gave it to the church as compensation.

The picture shows a detail of the ground floor beautiful window grille of the actual priest house. This style of grille is very common in the ancient Arenys houses.

Green behind bars

Arenys de Mar. Maresme.

This picture belongs to Album Medium format

The rial llarg

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One of the characteristics elements of the Maresme area are the “rials”. A “rial” is a short and stationary water flow. A “rial” basin is normally dry but during the storms, when it transport a large amount of water towards the sea.

Due to the “rials” stationary condition, they have been abused by humans since ancient times, and specially during the construction boom in the last decades of the XX century. Today it is not possible to find a non urbanized rial, even though some of them have sections that has not been altered yet.

In Arenys de Mar village we find the “rial llarg”. It is not a rial to go to relax and take a walk, because it is fully urbanized and there is no vegetation. Although this fact, it is a place that awakes on me a lot of thoughts: It never let me indifferent.

The “rial llarg” was heavy transformed by human, destroyed we could say. Today, the remains of an ancient time of splendour, like the old gate that is shown in the picture, remember me that all human related is brief, temporary.

The “rial llarg” is a ruined location, and for me, an example of our behaviour as human race.

The rial llarg

Arenys de Mar. Maresme.

This picture belongs to Album Imperfect Present

Arran de mar

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The last time I used a film camera was about 2006. For me, and for many other photographers, digital photography suddenly finished the chemical photography for ever. Or maybe not?

Few months ago, the Agrupació fotográfica d’Arenys de Mar, proposed to their members a project that required large format prints. Two meters and a half sized photographies were too much for the aged 10 megapixel sensor of my camera, so I had to find another way to perform the job.

The first and probably the easiest alternative was to join several images, making a mosaic. This technique is easy but, in order to get a professional result, it is necessary to deal with parallax problems and also, an intensive work in the digital lab is required. I have to admit that it didn’t seduce me.

The second option was the medium format photography. Any of the actual cameras from Phase One or Hasseblad had solved my problem, but they were and are out of my budget. I’m an amateur photographer and I have no income in return for my photographic work so I can’t account for renting or buying these cameras.

The solution was my family. My uncle is a retired photographer: he had his camera stored in a cupboard, but ready for work like it was the first day.

And this is why I started to take pictures with a 1961th Rolleiflex K7F camera.

The K7F is a TLR camera with a Carl Zeiss Planar f2.8 lens and an integrated selenium photometer. It was an incredible piece of technology when it was build and it is a collectors object of desire today.

The feelings of comming back to the film photography had been superb! It is amazing how fast we forget the past and we get in the habit of the new technologies. To shoot the Rollei means to loose the right now and the speed of the digital cameras, but also means to recover the pleasure of slow heat cooking your photography.

I will repeat the experience for sure. It is a pleasure to watch the world through the giant and inverted Rollei viewfinder. It is a pleasure to spend time speaking with people that ask me about the camera or explain me their photographic memories while I’m taking photos and it is also a pleasure the loud click that comes from the Rollei aged, but healthy shutter.

My first shoot with the Rollei:

Arran de mar

Arenys de Mar. Maresme.

This picture belongs to Album Medium format