British writer Tom Sharpe, one of the world’s greatest masters of humorous prose, exhibits a selection of his photographs in Barcelona from today. This is a facet the author excelled in before his passion for writing took hold.

Sharpe confessed during the presentation of the exhibition in the FNAC-L’Illa de Barcelona “I became initiated into photography by accident when I was teaching in a boarding school in South Africa and a teacher who was about to leave the school had just bought a much better camera, so he gave me his cheap plastic camera”.

The writer spent his free afternoons walking the black suburbs to photograph the living conditions of an impoverished and ignored population until he was arrested by the police and deported, accused of being an anti-apartheid agitator. They then destroyed 36.000 of his negatives, but he managed to save some he had put away safely.

The exhibition shows 30 unpublished black-and-white photographs taken by Sharpe in Cambridge during the 1960s. After Barcelona, the exhibition travels to Valencia, Marbella, Madrid, Asturias, Zaragoza and Alicante. The inauguration of this show coincides with the release of a new edition of pocket versions of Sharpe’s books in Spain. He is set to publish a new novel in September.