Marcel Giró
Photography
Places and people. 1950-1970
“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
Ansel Adams
In the 50s, Marcel was already a renowned photographer in Brazil and had a photo studio where major advertising campaigns were produced. Those were works of great technical complexity with enough implied people that were asking to understand the starting point of advertising creativity and at the same time providing large artistic doses, often limited by the client, the time or the budget.
In the middle of this traffic of people and money, Marcel discovered the pleasure of going out on weekends to take pictures without anything more than the camera around his neck. I am sure that it was a way of meeting again with the photographic fact, putting the counter to zero, to refine the gaze without further constraints than the passing of light and people.
Brazil was in full economic effervescence and the scenery was constantly transforming. Apartment buildings, highways, factories and aircrafts were offering pure lines, now that Marcel was playing masterfully to compose at composing with the long winter shadows. He was lucky that men were still dressing elegant jackets and wide wing hats; every image looks like a still of a of black cinema movie.
His exile's condition, which I also enjoyed and suffered simultaneously in my stay of eight years in Mexico, surelly was granting him a particular point of view. He wanted to know a new environment and, at the same time, to satisfy the need to look and understand constantly what was surrounding him.
It remains for us a precious document of his walks, the legacy of his privileged look.
Pep Avila
Photographer
