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

A tavern window in La Coruña, photographed from the pavement at night. The pillar between the panes is a column of enamel signs, stacked like a totem: El Águila beer, Cinzano, Sousas, Coca-Cola with its instruction to drink. A handwritten card promises grilled prawns. In the display, plates of crab and clams and a great round empanada; an elderly man in suit and tie leans over them with a knife, white hair lit by the bar. Beyond, men in overcoats sit at tables and a woman holds a glass of wine against the dark.

Masats made the window do the work of the photograph. The glass already frames, already flattens, already composes the interior into a picture with a caption. He simply stood where the tavern wanted its customers to stand. What we take for a slice of Galician life is a display designed to be looked at, and the camera is one more sheet of glass laid over the first. The old man carving is the only thing that does not know it is on show.

I distrust images that pretend to be windows, and I love this one because it admits that it is. The brands outnumber the people. The prawns are a promise, not a fact. Masats, who came to photography from the visual noise of the Spanish street, understood early that the world had already been turned into signs, and that a photographer's honesty lies in showing the signs rather than pretending to see past them.