Melchor Guardia
Simple everyday beauty
In the previous issue of the magazine (see IN PALMA 65, winter issue) we published a series of colour photographs by Melchor Guardia (Barcelona, 1903), a hairdresser by profession whose pastime is photography. In this new issue of the magazine, we focus on his black and white images, a reflection of simple stories and anonymous people from a Palma of a different era.
photography Melchor Guardia - Fotos Antiguas de Mallorca
To be a great photographer, you don’t need a great camera, but rather sensitivity, a sense of the moment and a special gift in terms of beauty. Melchor Guardia, who never made himself out to be a photographer (his entire life he worked as a ladies’ hairdresser in Plaza de Cort, in Palma), possessed these three qualities, which he timidly explored until photography allowed him to bring out all the creativity he had inside him. Only then did he allow himself to acquire a good camera, the Voigtländer with which he took the images that illustrate this report.
Behind the apparent spontaneity of Guardia’s photographs, there lies a [...]
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Read this article in full in IN PALMA 66. And if you like, subscribe to IN PALMA for 1 year and get the next 4 issues of the magazine delivered to your home.
