Casa Planas and the Visual Memory of the Second Half of the 20th Century, a Column by Patricia Almarcegui

Ten years ago, Casa Planas opened in Mallorca, an art center named after Josep Planas i Montanyà. A photojournalist and filmmaker born in Cardona in 1924, who passed away in Palma in 2016, he settled in the city in 1945 and opened the first of the 21 photographic stores he would eventually have in 1947, along with 200 employees and the first plane and helicopter to photograph the island. Today, Casa Planas houses a 700 m2 archive of its founder, with 800 cameras, a library, and three million images, which hold the visual and textual memory of the Balearic Islands and part of European tourism; it has also become a laboratory of ideas on archiving culture, leisure, and tourism. Marina Planas, granddaughter of Josep, a visual artist and researcher, has managed it since its inauguration. A fragment of her piece, Wartime Focuses of Tourism (2020), displayed on the wall of the center, describes almost literally the work of reflection and discussion that takes place: "We face the challenge of analyzing and critiquing a phenomenon that we simultaneously practice, enjoy, or endure."

Without the work of Josep Planas, a part of the collective memory would have been lost. His work allows an analysis of the physical and social context over 50 years, thanks to the documentation of tourist development, urban growth, social reporting, and current news. The surge of tourism began in the 1930s, but the development took place from the early 1950s until the late 1960s, practically when it arrived in Mallorca. Planas believed in the possibilities of the tourism boom and in the economic prosperity of Europe, which was seeking new places for leisure and vacations, and although most of his work is dedicated to the tourists and the hotel industry, there is a commendable and significant effort of authorship.

There they are, for example, social or wedding reports, with brides having lost expressions and almost terror-stricken gestures before the ceremony. Or the obsession with including traditional women in postcards (don't miss the photo of Errol Flynn with two of them during the year he spent on the island), symbolizing tradition and exoticism for tourists, who quickly begin to call them "beauties" on the backs of the postcards. The women in bikinis he 'photo-montages' and places in the foreground on the beaches. Tourists capturing images of the Balearic populations, so modern and strange to the places, that appear as exotic objects. And above all, the careful framing and plastic daring (also thanks to aerial images) of newly built hotel complexes photographed as if they were absolute sculptures.

Monuments that denote Planas' admiration for an architecture that is still yet to be studied and his astonishment, almost fascination, with the optimism of the moment. In this context, we must include the guide, Mallorca (1960), with texts by writer Blai Bonet, which collects a series of photographs, whose themes add to the usual subjects addressed by Planas. And where texts also invite reflection today. Consider this about the beach: "The beach is a beautiful summer version of the square. Summer, as a full force, gathers people there, but not in a social gathering, as in the agora, but with the elemental. There man steps on the earth and perhaps, in a fleeting moment of consciousness, thinks that human tragedy loses strength, as the salt, the pine, the glass, and the table are valued objectively."