At the age of 14 Manel Esclusa (Vic, 1952) started photography in his father’s laboratory and in 1974 he moved to Arlés to take an international photography course with great masters. In 1975 he was appointed professor of the Nikon school and in 1980 of the National Photography Center of Barcelona.
In 1977 he founded with Rafael Navarro Garralaga, Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera the group Alabern.
His photographic work has been largely dedicated to fashion photography, although since 1979 he has been investigating the conditions of night light, the city at night and different aspects of low-light conditions. One of the exhibitions that has gone through different countries is Aquariana, and some of its best-known series are Gits, Ahucs, Naus, Silepsis and Ubs de nit.
His works are in the collections of the National Library of France, the Réattu Museum of Arles and the National Art Museum of Catalonia.
Venezia Series, 1979
Venice,is it a tourist city? Indeed, but a lot more than that: a mysterious city.
The bridges, the passages, the silent row of the gondolas, the humidity on the skin, the amorous encounters, the big white squares at the end of the black streets, everything is baroque, black and white, just the opposite of the American accent of the idiot tourists. First of all, the Venetians have lived there fully, sensually, in the suffocating heat of summer, later in the icy cold of winter, where carnival masks have been nothing more than a wonderful way to join the sighs of bridges, the smell of water, the mystery of the night and the light of the day.
All this is reborn in the wonderful non-tourist photographs that Manel Esclusa made there in his youth, a kind of journey of the senses within the silence and the emptiness of the splash of water... His images are the true Venice: The city where we would like to forget the vulgarity of the rest of the world! Its black and white is the ideal metaphor of what photography is... Yes, truly, a wonderful series.
Bernard Plossu, May 2001, in Manel Esclusa. Silencis L
atents