L’Arxiu Fotogràfic of Barcelona exhibits a selection of photographic works by Jacques Léonard entitled Barcelona Gypsy. In the framework of the exhibition, which will be on display until the 14th of January 2012, the documentary Jacques Léonard, el payo Chac, directed by Yago Léonard and produced by Curt Ficcions Pruduccions, will be also presented at the French Institute of Barcelona.
This important archive is organized with around 18,000 negatives, 3,000 of these are about the Gypsy community in Barcelona Spain ranging from the late fifties to mid-seventies. These images are a unique document about life and all kinds of activities that identify the Gypsy culture of those decades.
For 15 years the photographic archive remained in forgotten, despite its historical and aesthetic significance. This exhibition rescues the memory of that time, aculture and an artist whose life mission was seeking to make a segregated community visible forever.
Jacques Léonard was born in 1909 in Paris. Son of a wealthy family in the wine regions of Jurançon, he grew up in a 40 rooms house, among fine horses and haute couture fine Parisian silk workshops owned by his family. He was horse trainer movie film editor, photographer, writer, designer, dreamer and adventurer. There was no creative activity Léonard didn’t enjoy.
His love for Gypsy people started when he discovered that his father belonged to that community, although he kept it in secret and had fully assimilated into Frenchculture. Aware of the changes operating in the post-war European society that condemned the extinction of the nomadic gypsy culture, he began his works and moved to Barcelona.
There he fell in love with a gypsy woman who worked as a model for painters and lived in the barracks of Montjuic. Her name was Rosario Amaya and was famous for her beauty and expressiveness. It was a lightning love. He left all the comforts of his lifestyle and moved to barracks of Montjuic.
Dances, dirt roads, slums and cooking stoves are some of the issues that describe the life of the Gypsies from the post-war photography humanistic perspective, in which poverty and marginalization are topics that inspire many filmmakers and photographers.
The stories that decorate the Léonard´s archive reveal his character and his passion for life. From engaging to transfer people fleeing the Spanish Civil War through the uncertain routes in the Pyrenees, to being a spy during World War II and moved to Australia with a contortionist circus, are some of the stories that you’ll see in the documentary that gave life to this exhibition at L’Arxiu Fotogràfic of Barcelona.
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