Pablo Picasso always maintained a complex and intense relationship with photography and with the photographers in his milieu, something that could be seen when he pretended to be a reporter one summer, when he used his image as an icon, or when he took inspired and playful self-portraits. This book, which is also the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name at the Museu Picasso of Barcelona, immerses the reader in the universe of Picasso through photography and brings together images that explore all the facets of a creator who is simultaneously the author, model, witness and viewer of his work and life.

This book aims to show how Picasso returned to a Barcelona in 1917 after many years in Paris, where he encountered a rich cultural scene, a city unlike the one he had left. This book intends to examine the nature of Picasso's relationships with the local artists on his return to Barcelona, the tourist outings he went on, the things he did in his spare time, and his artistic output during this period, which was particularly prolific. In this interlude in Barcelona, far from the oppressive climate in Paris, a city then at war, and from his Cubist circles, Picasso was able to work freely, searching for new forms of expression. This was a moment of stylistic transition in Picasso's uvre that would continue in the years immediately afterwards, when classical sources alternated totally freely with the achievements of Cubism.