Photo Essay: High Key Staircase (Casa Vicens, Barcelona)

Casa Vicens, Interior Staircase, #1, Barcelona, 2021

The Stairwell

This central staircase in Gaudi’s first house project, Casa Vicens (1883-1885), is a very recent addition (2014-2017) built to give gawking visitors easy and modern access to the various floors and rooms throughout the entirety of this Gaudí wunderwerk.

Most such gawkers, and rightly so, will spend their camera film/pixels on the gaudy Gaudí portion of the house, not this sleek, antiseptic new structure. I certainly did photograph the Gaudí stuff (in upcoming post)… but the lines and the light in this stairwell were also attracting my eye.

So… I thought I’d try to come up with a half dozen semi-abstract, geometrical images as sort of a mini-project.

This can be a very satisfying exercise: when face-to-face with an interesting subject, challenge yourself by creating a series of related photographs that would work well together… a photo essay, if you will.

The Process

The first step, in this case using my iPhone Xs, was the most difficult: visualize and compose. No matter the subject, I’m always reminded of what Edward Weston said about this step: “Composition is the strongest way of seeing.” That is, am I framing the subject in the best possible way?

I ask myself this… and I try, and I try again.

Back home, in Adobe Photoshop Elements, I cropped a bit here and there, cloned out a few distracting objects, then used my go-to B&W plugin, Silver Efex Pro, for the monochrome conversion. A high key treatment seemed most appropriate–to me, it seemed to best match the cleanliness, austerity and simplicity of the scene.