UNTIL SUNDAY 27/2
THE SHIP. University, 2
The first floor of the La Nau cloister opens to the exhibition Nocturnal. It's night photography, of frozen black and white images from the first half of the 20th century about late-night life in different Spanish cities, especially Madrid and Barcelona. No natural light and poor street lighting, taking a good photograph was very complicated a hundred years ago, but technical advances that reduced exposure times began to make it possible, even invent with games of light and sweeps. In Nocturnal Trams emerge from the shadows, warming themselves with steaming concoctions., lovers touching each other in the darkness of an alley, dances with bouffant hair, berets and mustaches that mark ten to two, transvestites from Barcelona's Chinatown, two chulapas drinking from the porrón at the Verbena de la Paloma, barquilleros selling on the Recoletos promenade, customers dozing in a café in La Latina at four in the morning and a woman playing the cello in a jazz quartet. Women began to occupy social spaces such as taverns, cinemas and parties previously reserved for men at sunset, moment in which any activity was a candidate to be branded as irregular and suspicious. Some, Of course, they were, others just fun and uninhibited, and they also wanted to enjoy them. S.M.
