Joana Biarnés Archive

The photographer Joana Biarnés

The photographic work of Joana Biarnés i Florensa (Terrassa, 1935-2018), considered the first female photojournalist in Spain, is represented by the Photographic Social Vision Foundation.

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Witness to social and cultural transformation

Her images show an important stage of the 20th century: the years of the Franco regime, with a sad and impoverished Spain, and the beginnings of democracy, its aspirations for freedom and how illusion was recovered. Joana Biarnés knew how to capture a changing society, also leaving testimony of catastrophes, sporting events and social events.

Important people of national art such as Dalí, Buñuel, Lola Flores, Rocío Durcal, Rocío Jurado, Marisol, Massiel, Joan Manuel Serrat or Raphael paraded before her camera, portrayed in a close and natural way. And international artists such as Orson Welles, Jack Lemmon, Yul Brinner, Roman Polanski, Clint Eastwood, or the Beatles themselves also surrendered to their charisma, being the only one who came to photograph the band in the privacy of their hotel room, during his Spanish tour.

A pioneering woman in photojournalism

Started in the profession as an assistant to her father, a sports photographer, she became a pioneer by overcoming the prejudices of what was a sector until then reserved for men.

She triumphed as a photojournalist, especially between the 1960s and 1970s, but by the 1980s, with the rise of tabloids, she preferred to leave the profession and pursue new personal challenges, thus fading from official history.

However, in 2012, her archive would be rediscovered by chance, when a documentarian, who was looking for images of floods in Catalonia in 1962, located the impressive images with which the then young apprentice had immortalized that disaster. That’s how, fortunately, we recovered the lead of a legendary photographer.

The legacy of Joana Biarnés and the future of photojournalism

Joana Biarnés receives the Medal of Honor from the Terrassa City Council © Imma Cortés

Since 2014, Photographic Social Vision has been proud to represent Joana Biarnés as an author and to convey the multiple acts of recognition of her career, as well as the honor of managing her archive and her rights, after the death of the photographer in December 2018. .

In just 5 years, we have been able to research and digitize her archive, organize exhibitions, manage interviews, defend her intellectual property rights and sell her photographs to collectors. In addition, we have co-edited with Blume Editorial, the precious anthological book Disparando con el corazón (“Shooting with the heart”; check its content here and/or buy it) and co-produced the documentary Una entre todos (“One among all”), together with Rec Produccions (link to see it on Filmin). Also, the TVE docuseries Detrás del Instante (“Behind the moment”), about the greats of Spanish photography, closed its first season with a chapter dedicated to Joana, in which we had the pleasure of participating.

At last, Joana has reconquered her place as indispensable in the photography of this country. But there is still a lot to be done in the diffusion of her figure and her vital principles. So in 2019, coinciding with the first anniversary of her loss, we present the Beca Joana Biarnés, a scholarship for young photojournalists, with which we fulfill one of her last wishes: that the benefits of her work be used to strengthen the professional development of future generations of photojournalists.

Exhibitions with the work of Joana Biarnés

Currently, four traveling exhibitions travel spreading his legacy:

• Joana Biarnés. Disparando con el corazón, an anthological exhibition curated by the author herself.
• Joana Biarnés. Moda a pie de calle, an exhibition focused on his stimulating work for the fashion sector and curated by the expert Josep Casamartina.
• Joana Biarnés. A contracorriente, a retrospective presented at PhotoEspaña 2016, produced by La Fábrica and curated by Chema Conesa.
• Viaje a un archivo. Crónica fotográfica del descubrimiento de Joana Biarnés 2015-2019, composed of unpublished work by Imma Cortés, a researcher at the Joana Biarnés Archive, which offers an intimate view of the last years of the country’s first photojournalist, when she finally obtained the deserved recognition.

Discover the photographs for sale from the Joana Biarnés Archive

• Analog copies made by hand, from the original negatives, and numbered.
• Black and white gelatin silver print on baryta paper and selenium bath.
• Signed by the photographer or certified by her husband Jean Michel Bamberger and the Foundation.
• Measures 30 x 40 cm and 40 x 40 cm.

In the download icon that you will find below we offer you the catalog with a selection of her work for sale:

To access more work by Joana Biarnés, obtain more details or make an appointment to see the copies, contact: imma.cortes@fundacionpsv.org or call 93 217 36 63.