Imatges, el quilòmetre zero d'Irene Polo

Abstract

Irene Polo i Roig (1909-1942) started out as a reporter for the weeklies Mirador and Imatges. It was in the latter, the weekly of Catalònia (an emblematic bookshop in Barcelona), where she worked with the most innovative journalistic forms of the 1930s. Imatges became a journalistic test tube for a generation that opted for dynamic reporting: on-the-street interviews, New Objectivity in photography, cinematographic representation, and syncopated rhythms stemming from radiophonic narration. The present article describes and quantifies the production of Irene Polo i Roig, a reporter immersed in the modus operandi of weekly news production: the urban report as breaking news, the human-interest-story rendition of popular figures within the context of urban events, and on-the-spot reporting as a model of meta-journalism.