Yesterday, Pamplona. Today, the boxing gyms of Madrid. In 1962 Lumen, the Barcelona publisher, gave Masats a subject — boxing — and a writer, Ignacio Aldecoa, for its series Palabra e Imagen. Masats knew nothing about boxing, so Aldecoa walked him round the gyms until he did. Then the writer settled it: "Let's do it this way: you take the photographs, give them to me, and I'll write." Fourteen short chapters came out of the pictures, and two architecture students of twenty-one, Óscar Tusquets and Lluís Clotet, turned the whole thing into a book that is probably one of the most important photography books ever published in Spain.
The lines by Ignacio Aldecoa are from Neutral Corner (Lumen, 1962). With thanks to Jaime Fuster Pérez, whose doctoral thesis on Masats, El roble en el páramo (2007), tells this story.
Click on any photograph to see its technical details and availability.
