‘La belleza de la máquina’ travelling exhibition, Palma de Mallorca

Fotografía industrial de Ramon de Baños (1890-1980)

15/10/2015 – 06/01/2016 – Palma de Mallorca (Islas Baleares)

The work by Ramon de Baños has its own style that teaches us to look at the beauty of industrial photography in another way.

From 15 October to 16 January, in thel Casal Solleric, the Gas Natural Fenosa Foundation Gas Museum presents the exhibition La belleza de la máquina about the most significant artistic work by Ramon de Baños (1890-1980) regarding industrial photography. Thanks to extensive research of the Historical Archive, today the Gas Natural Fenosa Foundation is releasing an unpublished selection of photographs that rediscover Ramon de Baños, known until now as a pioneer of Catalan cinema, as a photographer. The collection of photographs that have been brought to light have their own visual code and offer a new perspective that allows us to enjoy the beauty of industrial photography. These photographs now make up an extraordinary graphic document of a world that no longer exists.

The company Catalana de Gas y Electricidad S. A, just like many other companies of the time, carried out photography projects to document and publish its heritage and capacity of production. Despite the first collaborations between Ramon de Baños and Catalana de Gas in 1929 for the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona, he was not incorporated as a ‘photographer attached to the Technical Services’ until much later. The main project that Ramon de Baños carried out for the company was called 1947 Album, a collection of 58 photographs of industrial machinery and architecture. It is a collection of images that had a propaganda objective and wanted to show the important asset the company once had, its modernity and its extraordinary business activity.

Ramon de Baños develops his own photographic style that enables him to embellish and glorify machinery and the industrial landscape.. They are well-framed and well-structured pieces with a careful arrangement of the objects represented. The images are not representations of a truthful reality but rather, while avoiding a human presence, reveal the architectural magnificence of factories and the beauty of machinery. Hence, despite fulfilling a propaganda purpose, these images convey a distinctly spiritual emotion. The photographs have been altered by outlining certain elements with the finest of brushes, airbrushing techniques, paints, pencils and fine cutting tools. This meticulous work enabled him to define surfaces and planes of light, clean up irregularities and obscure imperfections to achieve the incredibly personal lyrical tone of his compositions.

The exhibition contains a selection of images taken from the 1947 Album and other industrial photographs, as well as a video from 1927 by Ramon de Baños. Thanks to the preservation of these photographs by the Historical Archive of the Gas Natural Fenosa Foundation, we can now enjoy this valuable material that serves as a graphical testimony to explain the history of science and technology that enables us to rediscover the industrial heritage of Spain.