Making fashion history

During the swinging ‘30s of the last century, with the world fresh out of one world war and prior to being plunged into another, there was no time to lose. It was an age when demand for luxury products was burgeoning in a society that was afraid of not having time to try everything out and experience everything. Exotic national and foreign brands started advertising their products in the most avant-garde magazines, such as D’Ací i d’Allà, Art de la Llum and Brisas. And it was in these very magazines that Ramón Batlles i Fontanet (Barcelona, 1901-1983) attained fame as a portraitist and photographer of fashion and luxury products for advertisements. His images for the brand Myrurgia are outstanding, as are his portraits of dancers taken on his trips to rehearsals at the Liceo opera house, which turned some of them into very well-known faces. The beauty and elegance of his photographs launched him as the portrait photographer of high society.

Influenced by the tenets of the avant-garde of the interwar period, he was innovative and highly acclaimed, and even came to create a new technique called “die transfer” in his portraits and compositions.

Unfortunately, very little of Ramón Batlles’ [...]

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