Producer history
Valentí Fargnoli Ianneta (Barcelona, 12 April 1885 - Girona, 7 April 1944) was one of the most important photographers of the first half of the 20th century.
He was born in a guesthouse on La Rambla in Barcelona at the end of the 19th century, in 1885. His parents, Antoni Fargnoli Rossi and Maria Annetta Vetranio, were two immigrants from Belmonte Castello, a small village near Naples, who arrived to Barcelona to get married and to try their luck there. It seems that he was born by chance, since his parents intended to return to Italy to have their first child, but the delivery happened shortly before the family could embark. The next day, he was baptised in the parish church of Sant Josep, now Santa Mònica, with the name Valentí Miquel Umberto. A few days later, they left for Belmonte Castello, where his brothers would be born.
When he returned to Catalonia, Fargnoli lived in Verges, and soon moved to Girona. His first documented photograph is from 1902 and it is of the Pes de la Palla old wall in Girona. Shortly afterwards, on 8 April 1904, he photographed King Alfonso XIII's visit to Barcelona and became a supplier to the royal household. In 1906, he documented the king's marriage to Victoria Eugenie. In 1910, he went to Argentina to try his luck as a photographer there, but after a year he returned to Catalonia, where he began to publish his photos in the Suplemento Literario del Autonomista magazine.
As a travelling photographer, he journeyed through the towns and landscapes of Girona province for decades. His work depicts architecture, landscapes, families, and daily life, and has become the image par excellence of Girona province before tourist development.
He made his living selling photographic postcards, cycling through the different towns and villages of Girona province, and collaborating with the Adolf Mas i Ginestà Archive. He married Rosa Vilaseca Grèbol, from Maçanet de la Selva.
Between 1925 and 1929, he took many promotional photographs of local orchestras. In 1933, he received his first commission from the City Council of Girona: to photograph two public schools built during the period of the Second Spanish Republic.
Shortly after the Civil War broke out, on 15 October 1936, he deposited 463 negatives in the Document Services Office of the Government of Catalonia's Delegate Commission. It is believed that a delegate of the Government of Catalonia took part of this archive to France.
After the war, between 1942 and 1943, he received another commission from the City Council of Girona: to photograph all of the historic masias (traditional country houses) in the province.
He died on 7 April 1944 in Girona. Despite spending much of his life in Girona, he kept his Italian nationality. Once he died, his heirs and relatives gradually sold the negatives they kept. The floods that occurred in the city in 1962 damaged the part of the archive that still remained, previously acquired by photographer Martí from Girona.
His brother, Adolf Fargnoli, was a specialist in carving wooden chests and boxes, and he was known and highly regarded by Salvador Dalí.
Archive history
The fonds is fully described in a catalogue and has been cleaned, restored, and placed in permanent preservation material in the INSPAI preservation repositories. It has also been 100 per cent digitised.
The fonds was located in Mr Martí Calvo's house, in a metal filing cabinet (1.30 m × 1.20 m × 0.70 cm) with twelve drawers. The glass plates were kept in paper envelopes from Sebastià Martí Roura or Sebastià Martí Calvo's era, with numbering linked to an inventory. Different drawers of the same filing cabinet contained Sebastià Martí Roura's fonds and Sebastià Martí Calvo's fonds.
Twenty per cent of the photographs were restored in 2012. The glass plates were dusty, dirty, and had numerous spots of raised emulsion, with cracked or broken glass, and most were clumsily repaired with adhesive tape over the images and were kept in poor quality commercial envelopes; this is a result of the intensive handling of the fonds for its sale.
The photographs were arranged by municipality and by record number, noted on a typed list with the municipality and a brief description of the image.
