KBr Fundación MAPFRE Barcelona Photo Center

The Fundación MAPFRE is promoting and renewing its cultural activity in Barcelona with the launch of its new space: KBr Fundación MAPFRE. The center, which opened its doors to the public on October 9, represents the continuity of the exhibition activities that the Foundation has been developing in the city over the last five years, but at the same time is a new stage in its intense dedication to artistic photography, one of its main areas of cultural activity since 2009.

This new space is located in one of the most representative buildings of contemporary Barcelona: The Torre MAPFRE, near the Olympic Port. At the foot of this iconic building, on the Avenida del Litoral and the promenade, the curved forms of the space that houses the rooms of the KBr are projected: a total of 1,400m2, distributed over two floors. In total, two exhibition rooms, a space for educational activities, a multipurpose room for public gatherings and a bookstore run by Juan Naranjo.

KBr
KBr is the chemical symbol for potassium bromide, a salt used in the analogue photography development process. Its main function is to slow down or delay the action of the developing agent, to prevent the formation of what is called a chemical veil, which allows obtaining a greater purity of the whites of an image.

This evocation of traditional photographic technique expresses the continuity of an exhibition program that has paid special attention to the great masters of photography. On the other hand, the universality of the symbol affirms the dimension of photography as a shared contemporary language and the profound international vocation with which the center has been conceived.

Programming
Its two exhibition spaces will continue to exhibit the main characteristics of our program (great “classics” of photography, renowned contemporary authors, renowned photographers), as highlighted by the double proposal with which it opens its doors: an extensive retrospective of Bill Brandt (Hamburg, 1904 London, 1983), which brings together 186 photographs that have been positively influenced by the photographer himself and that testify to his almost five decades of career during which he addressed all the great genres of the photographic discipline: social documentary, portrait, nude and landscape. Along with him, an important selection (110 photographs) from the collection of the American, Paul Strand (1890-1976), are part of the Foundation’s funds. The selection configures a representative vision of the work of someone who absorbed the social and documentary approaches of photography at the beginning of the 20th century to end up generating a work that supports some of the foundations of contemporary photography.

Along with this continuity, the KBr project also contemplates the opening of new itineraries in its program, such as regular collaboration with other Catalan institutions that pay attention to photography, the projection of work done in schools and other creative areas of young photography , and gradually making the Foundation’s Photography Collection known, the latter being the objective of the aforementioned Paul Strand exhibition.

The Foundation’s constant dedication to photography can be seen since its opening in 2006. The international projection of its programs will be a continuous and priority objective. This clear international vocation, already reflected in an active collaboration with many of the main photographic institutions in the world, will undoubtedly be a hallmark of this new project that, from one of the most creative and culturally dynamic cities of our time, celebrates everything what this fascinating testimony of life, photography, offers us.

Calendar
Monday (except holidays) closed
Tuesday to Sunday (and holidays) 11am-7pm

Last access: 30 minutes before closing.
Visitors will be asked to leave the exhibition hall 10 minutes before closing time.

Audio guide service: available in Spanish, Catalan and English

*These photographs can not be bled, harvested, guttered, overprinted or altered in any way, either color or shape ratio. It is also not allowed to write, superimpose or add text on the images. The reproduction of the photographs must be accompanied by the corresponding copyright and courtesy lines.

The reproduction of images in publications and on-line supports is allowed only for exhibition advertising and diffusion where the resolution of the reproduction is a maximum of 72 dpi / 204 pixels in non-downloadable format.