There’s a strange light here in Barcelona: as if the sun, falling to the ground, didn’t meet any obstacles before hitting buildings and people. Maybe it’s because of this that the shadows it casts here are darker and thicker. Walking through Catalan streets, it seems as if one is attending a Chinese shadow play: the passers-by, the narrow corners of the roads, even the tall towers of the Sagrada Familia project long black lines on the ground. Because here, in Barcelona, even the old drawing rule that says shadows are made by the same colours of the materials on which they are cast, just two tones darker, doesn’t apply. And when the sun doesn’t reach the ground, hiding behind the clouds, the light persists in the Catalan city. It spreads, alive, through the streets, with a new density to which we, who live in other cities of the world, are not used to. Maybe for this reason, Gaudí had the idea of trencadís. I choose to try to capture that light.

When I first arrived in Barcelona from Italy by bike, I had no idea what my presence in the city of Jordis, Jaumes, Queralts, and Rosers would mean. Instead, I did what I always do: repeating myself is a good way to survive. Pretending to work, I shoot with my camera during my free time on the road as much as I can. I grew up with Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Klein: black and white, analogue photography, working between 28 and 50 mm. It doesn’t seem that Barcelona could be reduced to this method. I always felt something was missing from the everyday accidents I caught on frame. I have always preferred black and white photography also because I’m a control freak: I shoot, develop, and print. Developing colour at home, as those who do it know, is quite a challenge: during the five-bath C-41 process, it’s difficult to keep the temperature at the needed 38°C (Celsius). Barcelona doesn’t leave me any other option. In the end, the first thing to return was colour. With one eye on my wallet and the other on the environment, I went for expired film.

I’ll take the opportunity for a brief parenthesis. I find analogue photography more sustainable than digital. To me, that’s because analogue photography relies on mechanical cameras (with no electricity involved). It also has an immediate corporeality that brings us, as photographers, into the consequences of our actions. While an analogue photograph carries materiality (the negative and, at least, the print), a digital one has a subtle way of polluting: it takes us far from the chain of cause and consequence of our human actions. A digital file stays on a computer, often on a server, and both of them pollute where and when we don’t look. Where did the electricity come from, and what rare minerals are exploited to produce servers, cameras, or computers are not questions we usually ask ourselves while working on them. But I’ve said too much, and I don’t intend to speak morally, also because I only half respect what I propose. So, briefly, I chose expired film for its colours and to reduce my environmental footprint.

There’s another leitmotif here in Barcelona: flight. It could be because of the number of seagulls, it could be because of the battle they fight with pigeons, it could be because tourists love them, or it could be because every Saturday morning, there’s a young girl flying on a trapeze in the Parc de la Ciutadella. It’s almost as if the effort made about one hundred years ago by that Parisian jumping from a stair above the water hasn’t been extinguished yet. Instead, it has just moved to this city, informing everything. It was while looking at Salomé flying, for the second time, to be honest, that I realized that, besides light and shadows, I was aiming for that moment: the suspended moment. I spent the day after working in the darkroom, printing a black and white film roll and developing the colour one, which I had shot twice: once aiming at the sky, the second time aiming at the trapeze. While I was printing, the title for the series came to my mind: when I was a young man, I really liked a singer whom I still listen to sometimes today. There was a song in particular: Del tempo che passa la felicità (Of the Time When Happiness Passes By). I didn’t fully understand that verse until that day, while I was in the red light, masking Salomé’s silhouette. That was the moment I was trying to capture, the moment of joy passing by. It’s a moment that I often miss. When it comes, I always fear not recognizing it; I always fear missing it. And when I shoot, I do it just to hold it, just to make it last a little bit longer. Thank God, it takes a while to pass, so 1/125 s should work.

One of the first things taught to someone learning photography is that photography as a medium is not objective, as much as one might believe. Composition and the choices about what to show and what to hide can deceive the spectator’s perception. Therefore, what I aimed for during this project was what brings personal joy to me. It is also a good and well-known rule to pursue a personal subject in photography. Saying that here is worth it, also to remember the power of a photographer (certainly the good ones or, and the two don’t have to coincide, the famous ones). There is always a tremendous amount of responsibility in shooting pictures, in deciding what is worth showing and what is not.

And last but not least, there’s another element that cannot be ignored here, in Barcelona: the sea. After many years, I met him again as a daily and urban presence. The beach usually isn’t frequented by locals; it is more of a border between Barcelona’s citizens, who do not go sunbathing lying on the sand, and tourists, who go so far as to take a bath at the mouth of the Besòs. Despite all of that, and despite people complaining about it, the sea is an identity element for Catalans: just ask the Sardinians who were captured as slaves by Catalan pirates, and me, having grown up for almost eighteen years in front of the sea. It’s impressive how we only understand how much we miss something when we return to it. According to a well-known Colombian writer, we experience melancholia for something only when we remove the bad memories of our experience with it. Barcelona’s sea seems not to agree with him. Someone should tell him.