Universal Archive: The Condition of the Document and the Modern Photographic Utopia

Exhibition at MACBA tracing the idea of the document in the history of photography, from the medium's place in the illustrated press of the early twentieth century to the questioning of photographic realism in the digital era. Curated by Jorge Ribalta.

Universal Archive: The Condition of the Document and the Modern Photographic Utopia ran at MACBA from 23 October 2008 to 6 January 2009, curated by Jorge Ribalta, with Bartomeu Marí as project director. The exhibition analysed the idea of a document in the history of photography through a series of debates about the genre across the twentieth century. It brought together close to 2,000 documents, among them around 1,000 vintage photographs and prints dating from 1851 to 2008, and closed with the Barcelona 2007 photographic mission, commissioned to contemporary photographers to portray the changing city. The exhibition was co-produced with the Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon, where it travelled in 2009.