Distinción. Balenciaga Museum

October 12, 2018

The Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum hosts the exhibition ‘Distinción. A century of fashion photography,’ produced by the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (Barcelona Museum of Design).

The show includes more than a hundred images by the most influential photographers on the national scene over the last 100 years. Included are notable works by Juan Gyenes, Oriol Maspons, Manel Esclusa, Maria Espeus, José Manuel Ferrater, Antoni Bernad, Manuel Outumuro, Bèla Adler & Salvador Fresneda, Txema Yeste, among others.

What have been the common features of fashion photography down through the years? How has it evolved? Why does it elicit such enormous fascination? To explain it, the curator Juan Naranjo has chosen the concept of Distinction, with its double meaning: elegance – an element intrinsic to fashion – and difference, connecting with the artistic vanguards. From the period of modernism – when magazines printed on high quality paper started reproducing photographs of models and dresses – to today’s digital media: seduction, provocation and glamour.

In a chronological and theme-based tour, the show explores the relationship between fashion photography, the artistic vanguards and the currents of thought that prompted social changes in each period. With this exhibition, the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum aims to continue inter-relating complementary artistic languages while continuing to define other contexts peripheral to the figure and time of Balenciaga.