LIFE

After Schlecker’s publication, Rafa Castells gradually moved away from analogue photography. He continued taking photos compulsively, but almost always using his mobile phone’s camera. This is why we were so surprised when, in the spring of 2018, he proposed to us the publication of a new book in line with Schlecker’s earlier aesthetics and motifs, and building on the same foundation: undeveloped reels that he had been accumulating for years. When he developed them, Rafa found that they covered a huge time span, from right after the publication of his first book to months before he started working on the new one.
The book itself became a reflection of the photographer’s youth, intense years of almost opposite extremes of night and day, madness and calm, loneliness and companionship, joy and sadness. In Life there are lonely walks and group parties, crappy graffiti and beautiful flowers, wrecked cars and sleeping cats, crazy nights and quiet mornings.

This time Rafa wanted to bring on board Albert Romagosa as a designer, deciding on something simple, almost invisible, that would broaden the format and add brilliance to the images, while giving the publication a fragile and disposable character that is close to that of a fanzine.