Esplugues, in pictures
Years of documenting Esplugues with continuity.
The brief
A city moves fast. An official event, a street festival, a match, a school show… and if you do not photograph it, it is gone. Esplugues City Council needed someone who would always be there, with a good eye and proper kit, to leave a visual record of how the city moves.
And to deliver it ready to use, with no waiting: the press release goes out the same day, and the photo has to be there before it.
What we did
We have spent more than eight years putting a face to everything that happens in Esplugues, and often to what is harder to see. Official events, street festivals, cultural, sporting, educational and community events. We do it as a joint venture: Desvern Imatge and Humbert Blanco, two teams so there is always someone.
We do not just turn up to take photos: we turn up to tell stories and catch the moment. An opening speech, a revetlla (night festival), an official visit, a charity run, a ceramics biennial: every event asks for a different eye and a frame that works tomorrow in the paper and in ten years in the archive.
We work side by side with the Communication department, adapting to each situation: what the press needs, what social media needs, what the municipal archive needs.
And we deliver in record time: edited, sorted and ready. Because Esplugues never stops, and neither do we. A good part of that work ends up in the Council’s public archive, which is now past 33,000 photographs.
Municipal photography service and a living city archive.
Institutional photography is not measured by the pretty photo. It is measured by the one that arrives on time, and by the one that in twenty years shows what the city was like. The key is always being there, looking properly and delivering fast. In that order.
The project in numbers
From the call to the delivery
A service like this has no launch: it has a routine. Communication calls us in (sometimes a week ahead, sometimes an hour). We arrive before it starts and stay until it ends, because the photo of the opening speech is not the one on stage, it is the one in the square. We edit and sort the same day: selection, light retouching and file names that make sense. And we deliver through whichever channel applies: press, social media, archive.
The result is there in the Council’s public archive on Flickr, now past 33,000 photographs: a city told year by year, event by event. Ongoing coverage is worth the sum, not any single photo.
How it went
Gallery · the project in pictures (click to enlarge)
Official events: the gesture and the place.
A signing with Espai Corberó behind, the investiture portrait in its original vertical frame, the local police on their street and a demonstration during an institutional visit. Protocol asks for correctness; we add the setting that says where it happens.
Festa Major and Sant Joan: the whole square.
The Festa Major 2023 concert seen from the stage, with the whole crowd behind; the opening address at Espai Corberó and the lighting of the Sant Joan bonfire. The festival photo is not the artist: it is the people who came.
Sport and participation: the street fills up.
The charity run and the World Breast Cancer Day walk. Here the coverage goes down to street level, inside the group, so you can see who takes part and how.
Culture, up close.
The Ceramics Biennial: a visitor gives the work its scale. The rest of the city (bikes, phones, everyday details) stays in the expandable archive below.
"If something is happening… chances are we are pointing a lens at it."The project team
Credits · the people behind it
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