Ramón Masats Spanish, 17/03/1931–4/03/2024

Five men in a bodega in Arcos de la Frontera, and above them a wall papered over and over with film posters, each one lapping the last. The barrels are stacked to the ceiling. A man in a flat cap stands at the centre with a wicker tray, a glass of dark wine on it, looking off at something outside the frame. On the left another man sits under the brim of his hat, head down over his hands. On the right three more are close together on low stools, smoking, one with his leg crossed high.

What holds me is the standing man's face. He is at work, he is carrying somebody else's wine, and for the length of the exposure he is not attending to any of it. His expression belongs to a private thought, and it is the only thing in the room that the room does not explain.

Behind him the film stars keep smiling from the wall in their rows: other lives, printed, pasted up, gone soft at the edges. The men below have their caps and their stools and their cigarettes. Between those two registers, the desired and the daily, the photograph offers no comment at all, which is how it earns the right to show both.