Yesterday, Anyós. Today, the Grand Palais. Two months later, Ramón Masats's photographs were hanging in Paris, at the 27th edition of Paris Photo (7–10 November 2024), in a hall that had just reopened after three years of restoration. Aisle B, number 44: our first time at the fair, with one artist on the walls.
Word went round during the vernissage. France Info came to the stand: "The fair's lovely surprise is in aisle B, number 44. You have to go — it's a discovery." Its headline called him an unknown Spanish Cartier-Bresson, and asked how such a photographer could be ignored abroad. Our answer: he worked for only eleven years, 1953 to 1964, and then television hired him to make documentaries. He did not consider himself an artist. "That these prints have survived until now is a miracle. Some of them his wife rescued from the rubbish."
That same week Le Nouvel Obs put him among its ten favourites of the fair, The Guardian chose the Sanfermines for its picture gallery, Le Monde wrote about "the Spaniard Ramón Masats, at galerie Alta", and El País ran his Ludmilla Tchérina. Among the photographs on those walls were the ones he had taken in this same city in 1962: the Eiffel Tower from underneath, the subway strike, everyone walking because nothing else moved. Sixty-two years later they came back to Paris, framed.
Nineteen of them were sold that November, seventeen during the four days of the fair. Two small vintages did not sell: they were given away. In March he had died and outside Spain almost nobody knew his name.
Installation views: Alta at Paris Photo, Grand Palais, stand B44, 2024. Press: France Info, Le Nouvel Obs and The Guardian, November 2024.
Works, in order of appearance: Tour Eiffel, Paris, 1962 · Paris, Subway Strike, 1962 · Arcos de la Frontera, Cádiz, 1959 · Ludmilla Tchérina, Madrid, 1964.
Click on any photograph to see its technical details and availability.
