edenvidal/the-catalan-woman
# the catalan woman
two photo albums from the encants market in barcelona. one catalan woman's life, black and white, roughly 1930s to 1940s. she has no name here. neither does anyone around her.
this is a documentary. the photographs and the record of making them are one object.
## rules
nothing is asserted that wasn't observed. the column says where it came from.
- `reading` — written on the print. verbatim, original spelling, original language.
- `description` — visible in the image, said plainly. a tram. a fur stole. four people.
- `notes` — anything concluded, with the evidence in the same sentence. also doubt.
- empty — unknown. an empty cell is information. a guessed cell is damage.
people are variables. `p001`, never a name — unless a name is read off a print, and then it belongs to the writing until evidence ties it to a face. don't merge two people because they look alike. don't split one because she aged. write the doubt down and leave both.
the chaos is data. the prints came as a loose stack, album order destroyed. shared paper, matching borders, the same hand, the same proportions — those are the only threads back. log them as a `group` with the evidence. a hunch is a row, not a silence.
always suggest. every session ends by proposing the next move and adding what it noticed to `story.md`. the process is the subject too. especially the failures.
## data
one row per photograph, `data.csv`.
| column | what |
| :---- | :---- |
| photo | `001`. files are `photo-001-front.png` and `photo-001-reverse.png` |
| sheet | which scan sheet it came off |
| size | inches, the print itself |
| pairing | mm of disagreement between front and reverse dimensions. under 2 is solid, over 5 is a guess, empty means placed by hand |
| reading | text on the reverse, verbatim |
| language | ca, es |
| when | sortable. `1944` or `1944-05` or `1944-06-12` |
| place | as written |
| people | `p001;p004` |
| group | prints that belong together, evidence in `story.md` |
| description | what's in the picture |
| notes | inferred, uncertain, damaged |
people and places keep their descriptions in `story.md`. prose belongs in prose.
## images
`scans/` holds the 36 original sheets, untouched. the album files are derived and can always be rebuilt from them. never edit in place.
the only change made so far is geometric — deskew, crop, rotate. no tone, no colour, no sharpening. when balancing happens it becomes a new derived set, and every adjustment gets a reason.
the front is the anchor for orientation. the reverse follows the front.