Pomés — Número 1

Pomés is an (a)periodical magazine about the life and work of Leopoldo Pomés, a Spanish photographer, publicist and overall bon-vivant who started working in the 1950s, boomed in the 1960s, and reigned for over four decades as one of Barcelona’s most revered cultural icons. He naturally blended his professional success in image-making with a passionate social life in constant collaboration with some of the most interesting contemporary artists and intellectuals

When Pomés died in 2019, he left a massive personal archive of tens of thousands of photographs, be it negatives, slides, contact sheets or paper copies, but also drawings, writings and all sorts of personal documents, as well as an outstanding collection of art and living spaces, homes and restaurants

Terranova was approached to work on a book about his legacy by Arxiu Leopoldo Pomés, his family-run state and archive led by Leopoldo’s daughter Juliet Pomés. It soon became clear that a single volume would never do justice to the scale and quality of the work he left behind. We naturally took the decision to turn the project into an ongoing series of publications, in the pop-format of classic style magazines, to both honor his spirit and try our best to share with the audience, one issue at a time, the complexity and richness of the archive.

This first number of Pomés features articles about one of his dearest pieces of furniture, his private Polaroid collection, an interview with his muse Maria José Roig, a series of glamorized portraits for the 1970s magazine Fotogramas, his encounter with writer Julio Cortazar, private correspondence with painter Manolo Millares, his lesser-known work on men’s fashion and lifestyle imagery, and the story behind his 1968 family home designed by Spanish architects Federico Correa & Alfonso Milà.

Exclusive collaborations to this first issue of Pomés include a mix of some of his contemporaries such as writer Eduardo Mendoza, editor Elisenda Nadal, photographer Jean Marie Pulm and architect Oscar Tusquets, with a younger generation of enthusiasts of his work, like photographers Adrià Cañameras and Jara Varela, design historian Guillem Celada, comic book artist Marc Torices and art directors Paris Image Unlimited.