Mario Sanz walks down the steps from the Cabo de Gata’s lighthouse tower. Date: 14/07/2017. In a regular basis, Mario has to take care of three lighthouses and the maritime signals and buoys at see or at the ports. In this occasion he is doing maintenance work a an other light house covering the holidays from one of his colleagues.
A gondolero dries he’s gondola after the rain in the Canonica Palazzo Canal of Venice, Italy. Date: 02/2010. Photoghrapher: Xabier Mikel Laburu Van Woudenberg. *Image taken in B/W film.
A tourist guide calls the attention of her group in front of the San Marco Basilica in Venice, Italy. Date: 02/2010. Photoghrapher: Xabier Mikel Laburu Van Woudenberg. *Image taken in B/W film.
A tourist wears a Carnival mask in the Sant Marco Square in Venice, Italy. Date: 02/2010. Photoghrapher: Xabier Mikel Laburu Van Woudenberg. *Image taken in B/W film.
Farida teaches a group of children how to count in class.
Jaime Bellini, stands in front of the entrance of his bookshop in the Princep de Viena street of Barcelona, Spain. Date: 16/09/2015. Photo: Xabier Mikel Laburu. Bellini emmigrated from Galicia after the Spanish Civil War, after working in several jobs, in 1960 he opens a second hand bookshop. Now he is retired but opens the shop every days for a few hours to ventilate the stock and talk with the few old neighbors or clients that still remain. His son decided to continue the business but sells in the markets while he uses the bookshop as a storehouse.
Tourists walk in front of the closed blind from the El Indio shop in Carme street of Barcelona, Spain. Date: 07/09/2015. Photo: Xabier Mikel Laburu. Dating back to the 1850’s this shop was one of the referents in cloth sales in Barcelona and the rest of Spain. After the civil war the owners disappeared and the father from the last owner of the shop (Victor Riera), who was a worker in the shop at the time, found the way to buy it with help of a parter in 1940. Victor Riera, would take over the shop in 1970 and would keep it working until December 31st of 2014, when, in part for retirement and in part due to the changes in the rental conditions, made him decide it was not worthed to continue the business.
Luis Sanroman attends a client in the Churreria Banys Nous in Barcelona, Spain. Date: 18/09/2015. Photo: Xabier Mikel Laburu. This churro shop was property from one of the uncles from Luis Sanroman, the owner. In 1969 his father started working in the shop and when he retired in 2014, Luis took his place. Luis says that he has a rental contract that expires in 10 years and has no idea about what will happen there on. He recognizes that if he could he would like to buy the shop since he always has been there.
Detail of a client sited on a barber chair in the extinct Peluqueria 11 barbershop of Tallers Street in Barcelona, Spain. Date: 03/2003. Photo: Xabier Mikel Laburu. Vicens Amat was the last proprietary of the barbershop. The father of Vicens was the first of the two generation barbershop history. Though Vicens Amat never liked to work as a barber, he combined his studies with working in the shop, mainly taking care of the accounts. In 1982 his father dies and he decides to leave his current job as a High-School teacher and work full time in the barber shop. The fall in client numbers, the competence in the neighborhood with other barbershops managed mainly by immigrants and facing retirement, made him close the barbershop.
Portrait of Florenci Torrent (88) wearing a traditional Catalan hat and girdle in the restaurant he founded in Sant Marti de Llemana, Spain. Date: 29-09-2017. Photo: Xabier Mikel Laburu. Florenci says he is apolitical following the advice of his uncle who was executed by the Franco regime at the end of the Spanish Civil War. He confesses he feels Catalan, and that his life has been a constant of hard working. Not knowing what to expect from the possible outcome he does not want to adventure in suppositions arguing that he has little time left and he will not probably see it. As what it would look like a contradiction, he feels nostalgic from the Franco era, not for it’s ideology since he never has been able to overcome the death of his uncle, but because life was simplier than in our days.
