The oak in the moor: The photographic trajectory of Ramón Masats
This present doctoral thesis approaches the figure of Ramón Masats and his works in 
his photographic period. From a historical point of view our photographer belonged to a 
changing generation. This generation revolutionized the Spanish photographic scene in 
the mid fifties, during Franco's dictatorship. The context of our work talks about the 
causes and reasons and also the foreign influences, the main characters and the 
associations, magazines and publishers who participated in this generation crash. 
Masats was one of the main leaders in this revolution because he participated in the 
most controversial exhibitions, he published in all the Spanish photographic magazines 
of the moment and he belonged to the three photographic associations where the main 
critical voices were heard.
In the second part, our thesis analyses the new theoretical concepts which are 
developed in this period. These concepts are used by Masats but he never talked 
about them. Our photographer isn't a theoretic. He has always justified his decisions 
using the bad excuse of intuition and instinct. Nevertheless, we have also studied the 
influence of his generation partners. They developed topics such as renouncing to 
pictorial photography or photographic competitions in favour of pure photography. We 
have studied how Masats uses concepts like professional photography, the usefulness 
of art, humanitarian photography and ethics. 
At last, we approached the investigation lines which Masats uses in his own 
artistic practice. He has developed photographic topics –related to "summary images"– 
where the subject is so deconstructed that it reaches its elementary substance. Masats 
experiments with forms, geometry, focusing, the shutter speed… and, specially, with 
photographic series. He considers the photographic book an expressive unit (e.g. his 
book Neutral Corner, 1962). Masats has generated a visual language very similar to 
cinema. He has played with the position of his photographies in the pages of his book 
Los Sanfermines (1953-1963). He has generated subjective shots, shots-against-shots, 
movement series… a language that will take to him to explore the world of 
cinematography assembly and of audio-visual documentary direction. He carried out 
this activity during almost twenty years.


Jaime Fuster Pérez