Photography at EINA, the classes by Xavier Miserachs 1967

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, 1937 –1998) was a photography teacher at EINA between the 1967-68 and the 1972-73 academic years. He was one of the group of teachers that resigned as teachers at Elisava to found a new school. Linked to EINA since the school’s origins as a founder and regular teacher, he subsequently kept up contact through occasional actions and lectures.

Consequently, it was through Miserachs that the first generations of EINA students received their introduction to photography. As Carme Vives, student and later teacher at EINA, recalls, he was a methodical and rigorous teacher who was very interested in the students’ learning his subject. In first-year classes, emphasis was placed on photography and processing techniques and procedures, but mastery of photographic technique also offered another way to scrutinise the environment, provided an education in looking and turned the student into a producer of images. In fact, the teaching of design gave photography a place when the latter was still a medium that was excluded from fine arts and university courses.


Xavier Miserachs and model in the photography class. Photograph loaned by Merche Cisteró.
Xavier Miserachs and model in the photography class. Photograph loaned by Merche Cisteró.

The 1970-71 academic year saw the addition of Paco Llobet as photography teacher, who would be the teacher of this subject until 1982-83. In the 1978-79 academic year, this was done by Manel Esclusa who has, since then and jointly with Núria Andreu and Artur Muñoz (who joined in 1998 and 2008, respectively), been responsible for a large part of the various photography courses taught at EINA. It is of interest to note the different part played in photography by these three names, all of them representative of teaching at EINA. Miserachs is recognised as one of the most representative photographers of objectivist and critical realism. For his part, Llobet has done a lot of his work in the field of advertising and fashion photography. Esclusa has been outstanding as an innovative and personal photographer in the area of urban landscape. In all, three completely different concepts of photography, three genres and three visions.

As well as these, other names in the field of photography have been associated at one time or another, with greater or lesser intensity, with the school: Colita, Humberto Rivas, Toni Catany, Oukalele, J. Sarrà, Antonio Molinero and Pere Llunas,


Card of the seminars taught by Manel Esclusa, R. Barnils, J. Rigol, J. Sarrà and Oukalele in the 1979-1980 academic year.
Card of the seminars taught by Manel Esclusa, R. Barnils, J. Rigol, J. Sarrà and Oukalele in the 1979-1980 academic year.

The article serves to remind us of Xavier Miserachs, and to pay discreet tribute to the memory of a teacher and friend of EINA. At the same time, it has allowed us to speak of the role played by photography in design and art courses, as they have been developed in the school; in other words, as a technical resource of image production, as learning, as a discipline of observation and understanding of the environment, and, evidently, as a means of personal expression and communication of ideas.

Text published originally in: Pibernat, Oriol. “Photography at EINA, the classes by Xavier Miserachs”. Plec: informatiu d’EINA magazine. No. 13 (May 2002), p. 4.

Xavier Miserachs i model a la classe de fotografia a EINA Xavier Miserachs i model a la classe de fotografia a EINA