The Gran Teatre del Liceu has opened its doors this morning to tolerance, coexistence and diversity to capture in a unique photograph the true essence of Barcelona that makes up the different cultures and people that inhabit the city.
The artist Jordi Bernadó has been commissioned to immortalize some 2,000 anonymous people of 58 nationalities and 25 different languages, aged between four months and 105 years, sitting in the seats of the operatic temple in a proposal baptized as "Me We" in which has been inspired by a scientific method and worked in the last year on how to compose "a human cartography of the city", with a mixture of genders, ideologies, ages, sexualities, communities and nationalities, among other variables.
An action that aims to value diversity and claim an "inclusive, fair and creative" society as well as to reflect the feeling of belonging, identity and common bonds beyond the differences between people. The snapshot aims to show "an infinite mosaic of stories and different faces", says Bernadó, for whom the practice of photography is a path of knowledge.
Winner of the 2002 PHotoESPAÑA Award in the category of Best Photography Book with Very Very Bad News, the artist poses the challenge as "an ode to the city" because "we are all one and Barcelona is all of us". The doors of the Liceu opened at 10:30 a.m. and an hour later they were filled with volunteers who wanted to appear in the image, scheduled for 11:40 a.m.
Daniela Ramírez, sales manager, accepted the proposal "because I was curious to know what is being done. Besides, I really like the Liceu. I have tried to convince my children, one of them studies Fine Arts, but I have not succeeded". Teresa, an interior designer, has come with her friend Magda interested "because it is an artistic project and we always follow the world of art. We are very curious."
Carmele has also not hesitated to sign up for the proposal since "I love Jordi's photos and entering the Liceu is amazing. A photo of this nature is very beautiful," she says smiling. Curiosity has also pushed Mushda, a 19-year-old Afghan student, to the Liceu. Accompanied by her two brothers, she says that she wanted to "participate in a unique experience and meet other people."
Shortly before the big moment arrived, its artistic director, Víctor García de Gomar, came out on stage at the Liceu to thank everyone for attending "this action by Jordi Bernadó that we have titled Me/We and which is a ceremony that, on the other hand, obeys a statistical reality of what Barcelona is today". García de Gomar has pointed out that Bernadó was "nervous and expectant" before the realization of "a symbolic photograph of 2000 actors for a single photographer".
And he recalled that "the history of this project dates back to 1975 when the famous boxer Mohamed Ali, now retired, gave lectures at different universities and had many followers almost like a prophet or pacifist who denounced the limitation of certain rights. At a conference at Harvard that year, someone in the audience asked him for a poem, and after thinking for a while, he referred to the shortest reference in the English language, Me/We, the idea of I and we.
"The idea of us is that of the renunciation of the self to end up being us as a group that makes us much stronger. That claim is what we present today, speaking from universality, not from individuality. Therefore we are stronger when we are together", he declared to the applause of the public who, minutes later, stood still to be immortalized in front of Bernadó's camera, - "remember that you can breathe", a female voice-over joked, perched on a kind of small crane and against a background of star constellations. The photography of today's Barcelona in a few clicks and with the final point of the wonderful voices of the Cor de Cambra of the Palau de la Música Catalana.
