In the 1970s Susan Sontag stated that photography had a characteristic that distanced it from painting on the one hand and opened up the thematic and conceptual field of technical images in regard to painted scenes on the other: the limitless interest of photography in everything that surrounds it (us). Thanks to increasingly precise technology, it became possible to record things that previously went unnoticed by the human eye. This leap in the dark broadened the margins of the world. If painting was the end (in the sense of 'purpose') of major historical events and persons or places which were in a state of continual change but nonetheless noteworthy, then photography became the means. The logical conclusion was to turn every slight gesture and potential change into something noteworthy.

In the 1990s the equation was further complicated by the increasingly feasible notion of a full-scale reproduction of the world. Thus, we found ourselves facing two artificially created worlds which, in spite of their differences, were derived from the real world. That twist in perception turned us into more wide-awake observers and, to paraphrase Peter Osborne, made photography a 'post-conceptual' language, aware of its space and its time. Themes that had previously been peripheral became core: great tales gave way to 'micropolitics', and photography was present and played a decisive part in each and every one of these actions. Social science, including anthropology, sociology and ethnology, resorted to visual methods as artists made lax use of their research methods. Hal Foster bore witness to the process in his compilation of essays The Return of the Real.

Xavier Ribas is one of those artists who combines anthropological research with visual mise-en-scènes, especially in his more recent projects. These two Untitled photos are part of a generic series of 31 called Sundays, taken between 1994 and 1997. They show curiosity about actions that hint at a certain blurring of class distinctions in transitional spaces between urban and rural settings, within limits defined by the differences between them. In this, Ribas placed himself at the heart of the debate, as those interstitial spaces on threshold between the productive and the recreational, between what is built and what has yet to be built, between what is said and what is left unsaid, became a major theme in contemporary art. There was no lack of photographers who sought to define visually what Marc Augé called 'non-places': an idea that was obvious and ubiquitous in contemporary cities but had never been formally defined.

In Sundays, Ribas's focus is surprising but deliberate. The resulting images bring together several decisive aspects located somewhere between the autobiographical, the contextual and the historical. He has known the locations shown since he was a child: 'In the late 1960s Line 4 of the Barcelona Metro was built to link the district of Poblenou with the city centre. […] Most people in the district began to feel that Barcelona was no longer a place that they had to go to, but a place where they already were'. The series also dates from the years that followed the great socio-cultural boom sparked by the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, when the party finery of continual renewal in which the city had been decked out began to show signs of coming apart at the seams. On the other hand, the weekenders shown seem to be reacting to the geopolitical limits of the city through simple life-affirming actions. Public spaces are reclaimed for meetings between friends, improvised parties and real conversations. Meanwhile, the continual coming and going of local people creates a path through the high grass to the social housing blocks. Like Marcovaldo in the stories by Italo Calvino, but armed with a camera, Ribas finds his place in Sundays, in a delicate balance between the expectation sparked by known rituals and the surprise of chance encounters.

Álvaro de los Ángeles