Joana Biarnés i Florensa, Spain’s first female photojournalist.
In spite of opposition from all sides and growing up in the Franco era, Joana Biarnés i Florensa (1935-2018) was the first female Spanish photographer to become a photojournalist—she didn’t let anything stop her from pursuing her vocation.
Daughter of Rosario Florensa and Joan Biarnés, Joana was born in Terrassa in 1935 into a humble family living in precarious conditions. Her mother was a homemaker who made sure the family never went hungry even in the leanest of times, and her father was a sports photographer, so Joana grew up around cameras. She wasn’t a fan of the strict public school system under the Franco regime, but she loved studying photography with her father when she could; she often assisted him in the darkroom, even from a very young age. Her father’s initial reluctance to let her help him due to her gender was swept away by the evidence of her talent when she first started experimenting with taking her own photos with his camera on family vacations. Joana later went on to study formally at the Barcelona School of Journalism.
Her first roadblock appeared in the form of a journalism professor named Manuel Del Arco: when he discovered that she disliked photographing bullfights because of the gore and bloodshed that inevitably occurred, he assigned her to do a visual report of local slaughterhouses. Biarnés, showing the first hints of the steely nerves that would serve her well throughout her career, not only photographed the slaughterhouses and their killing processes in minute details, but also specifically included in her report images of animals with physical deformities or other physical aberrations, as if to say: “You think I can’t handle this? Watch me.”
She was able to sell this bloody set of photos to a veterinarian who was about to publish a book on slaughterhouses, effectively transforming her professor’s attempt at intimidation into her first commercial photography sale.
Early Career
Joana finished her degree in journalism, but found that the professional opportunities open to male colleagues with the same credentials as she had were not open to a woman. As a result, she often ended up assisting her father on his projects, even though she still encountered extreme resistance. For example, a referee once halted a football game mid-match because both he and the 40,000-member, mostly male audience, objected to a female photographer on the field. She was booed, called a slut and a whore, told to “go home and wash dishes.” However, Biarnés continued to put herself in situations that proved her mettle, such as covering a massive 1962 flood in her hometown of Terrassa. This report, filled with images of death and devastation, was the first to bring her national attention.
After that, her first real opportunity came when the popular Madrid-based newspaper Pueblo hired her to photograph society events, though she was also sent to cover Parliamentary sessions. She was only 20 years old. At the paper she became known as a pioneering fashion photographer, but worked on pieces of all kinds with other journalists who would also become household names in time; these included Raúl del Pozo, José Antonio Navas and Jesús Hermida.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she continued to make a name for herself, and not always in the society pages: in her first few years at the paper, she collaborated with José Antonio Navas on a piece that exposed the abuse of children at a boarding school for children of single mothers run by the Madrid City Council. This resulted in a scandal that almost closed down the newspaper; the Franco regime did not take kindly to investigative reporting that highlighted corruption within the system.
Things got so complicated for the two journalists that they were forced to flee the country for a short time. The far-right paramilitary group called the Warriors of Christ the King sent her death threats for photographing these aspects of Franco’s Spain that the regime would have preferred to keep under wraps. They hid out in Finland before quietly returning home.
Photographing the Stars
In 1965, she managed to gain access to a place that no other photojournalist, male or female, was able to: The Beatles’ hotel room. After failing to get their permission to take their photographs on a flight from Madrid to Barcelona, she stowed away in the service elevator of their hotel and managed to get past the bodyguard to knock on the door of their suite. As the story goes, Ringo opened the door and said, “You again!?” The drummer agreed to one photo, which turned into a session with the whole band that lasted three hours, in spite of Biarnés’ nearly non-existent English.
Unfortunately, her employer at Pueblo crushed her hopes when he refused to publish the photos; Franco’s minions were still keeping a close eye on her, and on the newspaper, after the boarding school article scandal. The regime had decided that The Beatles’ long-haired, hippie, counter-culture aesthetic was bad for the morality of Spanish youth, and Pueblo’s editor didn’t want to do anything that could potentially cause trouble. The photographer, crushed, gave the photos to the magazine Ondas so that they would at least see the light of day.
Right from the start, she gained a reputation for charming her way into situations where other photographers and journalists were denied access, and for knowing how to put the subjects of her shoots at ease. Biarnés was also known for her discretion: for refusing to gossip about her subjects, no matter what she saw or what they confided in her, and for never sharing or selling images that portrayed her often famous subjects in a compromising position or an unflattering light.
So much so, in fact, that she became friends with a number of her subjects, and became the official or unofficial photographer of many. When she left Pueblo, she became the singer Rafael’s official photographer on his tours, and was also the preferred photographer of Joan Serrat. Dalí said that he considered her to be one of his protégés, and appreciated that she wasn’t intimidated by his intentionally outlandish behavior.
Over the years, she would take black and white portraits of Dalí, as well as of Roman Polanski, Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel, Clint Eastwood, Lola Flores, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, Yul Brinner and numerous other famous faces. Many of these black and white portraits were displayed in the traveling retrospective exhibition Joana Biarnés: Against the Current, which took place in Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid in 2016. Also displayed were photos that illustrated the extremes of Spanish society—from celebrity parties to abject poverty—as well as the changes that took place in the country under the rule of Francisco Franco and as his dictatorship ended.
Courage and Conviction
She was known for her bravery and for being willing to do anything to get the shot: from pretending to be a male colleague’s wife or secretary, to talking her way into places she didn’t belong, even at the risk of professional blowback or personal danger.
It was while Joana was working in Madrid that she met her husband, a Paris Match correspondent who had been sent to do some reporting in Madrid. One of Biarnés’ colleagues (who spoke no French, whereas she did) asked her to take the other journalist along to a few social events. In the end, they fell in love and got married. Biarnés later spoke openly about the fact that she appreciated his highly “un-Spanish” lack of jealousy, and his understanding of the odd hours and strange demands of her profession.
For a while, she worked for ABC and other publications, as well as the press agencies Heliopress, Cosmopress and others. With a group of colleagues, Joana founded the Sincropress photography agency. However, she clashed with the changing social norms and their subsequent effect on the world of journalism in the 1980s, when the tabloids and other “yellow” press exerted pressure on photographers to go after sensationalist images rather than report on real issues. According to an interview she did with El Periódico near the end of her life, she said her feeling of revulsion reached critical mass in 1985 when she offered a publication a story about a man who had survived cancer against all odds, and they told her that story “wasn’t interesting,” and that they preferred entertainment and stories about pregnant celebrities.
Though she didn’t know it at the time, this would result in her work fading from the public eye for nearly three decades as she dedicated herself to pursuits outside of photography. Biarnés went to Ibiza, where she and several friends opened a restaurant with friends called Can Joana. She reportedly didn’t pick up the camera again for 22 years. She later closed the restaurant and retired to Viladecavalls.
Shooting with the Heart
Her work was rediscovered in 2012 by a documentary filmmaker who was looking for archival images of the historic 1962 flood, and came across records of Biarnés’ extensive body of work. Over the next five years, the Photographic Social Vision Foundation researched, scanned and digitized her images, and made it their mission to call attention to photos and her impact on the world of photojournalism.
The year before she died, the Foundation co-edited the book Disparando con el Corazón (“Shooting with the Heart”) and also co-produced with Rec Productions the documentary titled Una Entre Todos (“One Amongst Everyone”). The feminine version of the word “one,” “una,” and the masculine “todos” for “all” or “everyone” specifically highlights her singular position as a woman in a man’s professional world. The Foundation also collaborated with Spanish national television (RTVE) on an episode about Biarnés in the docuseries Detrás del Instante (Behind the Instant).
Joana received the Cross of Sant Jordi from the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2014, and the Medal of Honor from the Terrassa City Council in 2016. In 2017, she was honored with a Gràffica Award, which celebrates notable contributions to culture in Spain. The jury said it chose her because she clearly demonstrated that "good photojournalism does not involve gender or discrimination, but rather is about committed, passionate and brave people," and that they appreciated the "singular look with which she immortalized the worlds of sports, fashion, culture, politics and society of her time.”
When asked what her favorite photo was, she was known to quote the American photographer Imogen Cunningham: “Which of my photos is my favorite photograph? The one that I’m going to take tomorrow.”
Joana Biarnés i Florensa died at the age of 83, in 2018. At the time, she was blind in one eye due to a degenerative disease, but reportedly still read three newspapers every day, and took photos for fun.
Today, the Photographic Social Vision Foundation manages her copyrights, and makes prints of her work available for sale to collectors via the Foundation’s website. Their preservation of the photographer’s negatives as well as an annual scholarship for young photojournalists in her name was made possible by a significant donation to the Foundation by her husband, journalist Jean Michel Bamberger.