Reference code

CAT INSPAI 57

Level of description

Collection

Title

Marçal Molas Collection

Date(s)

1990-2016

Volume and support

133,500 analogue photographs, (including 76,225 35 mm negatives, on cellulose acetate plastic and in black and white; 45,330 35 mm negatives, in plastic and colour; 9,800 slides; 1,278 photographs on paper, in black and white and colour; 637 6 × 6 negatives on cellulose acetate plastic and in black and white, and 230 other formats) y 61,800 digital images.

Name of producer(s)

Marçal Molas i Vidal

Producer history

Marçal Molas i Vidal (Sant Gregori, 1968) graduated from the Eina School in Barcelona (1988-1991) where he was taught by, among others, photographers such as Manel Esclusa and Humberto Ribas. In October 1990, he began working as a photojournalist at the Diari de Girona, where he met Jordi Ribot, Jordi Picazo and Pep Iglésias, from whom he learned the trade. He spent most of his professional career at this newspaper until 2000. He also did reports for Revista de Girona and El Triangle. During this decade Molas made an in-depth portrayal of the social, political, cultural and sporting life of the counties of Girona. Also, during the nineties he participated in various photographic contests, such as Tarazona Foto (1992), La Pontenca de Girona, with the exhibition ¿Bluefields¿ (1995), and the festival Visa pour l¿Image, in Perpignan (1998 and 1999). From the year 2000 onwards, the work of Marçal Molas began to focus on the natural world, with photos of flora and fauna as well as landscapes. In 2009, he held an exhibition in the Aiguamolls de l¿Empordà Natural Park on the birds of the area, and in 2010 he participated in the Biennial d¿Olot with an exhibition entitled ¿Calculacions d¿espai¿ (Space calculations), in which he explored the search for new languages and the abstraction of natural forms. In September 2017, his entire photographic collection was admitted to INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge.

Archive history

This professional and personal photographic collection was located at the headquarters of the Diari de Girona and at his private address during the time it was being produced (1990-2016). In 2015 and 2017, staff from INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge made different visits to the photographer¿s house, where they were able to assess the entire collection. The collection entered the INSPAI facilities in September 2017. The original material from the Diari de Girona was arranged chronologically, and approximately two thirds of the material contained the title and date of each report at the top of the pages. The first tasks to be carried out were the cleaning, installation, numbering and digitisation of the collection, between 2019 and the beginning of 2021. The photographic material was originally located in 52 folders, 38 of which corresponded to his time as a photojournalist at the Diari de Girona and 7 contained images of nature. The rest included photographs from other journalistic commissions, portraits of the photographer¿s friends, snapshots of Sant Gregori, images from a trip to Bluefields (Nicaragua), and family scenes. It also included four family albums with photographs from different periods and a box with paper reproductions of nature photographs. The images were cleaned and mounted in permanent conservation material at the INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge. At the same time as they were being cleaned and mounted, the collection was compiled and numbered, a brief reference description of the documentary units comprising it was made, based on the internal database, and it was digitised. When it came to assessing what to digitise, as the majority of the collection consisted of journalistic and nature reports with recurrent images, it was decided that approximately 20% of the collection should be digitised. As a result, of the 133,000 total images, some 25,000 were digitised. From May 2021, the part corresponding to the work generated by Diari de Girona began to be documented. (1990-2000).

Details of entry

Donation of the fund by Marçal Molas i Vidal on 15 September, 2017, and an additional transfer on 4 December, 2019.

Scope and content

Most of Marçal Molas¿ photographs correspond to his time as a photojournalist at the Diari de Girona, where he began working in October 1990. Over these years the photographer¿s production was intense, and up to a dozen photos a day were published in the pages of the newspaper. This material illustrates the social, political, cultural and sporting life of the Girona counties during those years. Success stories, political life, events and press conferences, trials, portraits of significant figures in the world of culture, cultural representations of all kinds, exhibitions, as well as a wide range of different sports, make up the almost 90,000 negatives, in black and white and in colour, which give us an insight not only into the life of the city of Girona, but also the history of most of the towns in the province through those years. As far as the nature-related material is concerned, it illustrates a wide variety of the flora and fauna of the counties of Girona, with a more artistic approach than seen in the previous material. Most of the images correspond to the area closest to the photographer¿s home, La Bruguera de Sant Gregori, but it also portrays other places in the province such as the wetlands of the Empordà or Cap Norfeu de Roses. The material preserved in 6 × 6 format shows us a much more experimental Marçal Molas, who plays with the different formats and sensitivities of the films. As far as his personal life is concerned, there are numerous images of his hometown, Sant Gregori, and of the time he spent with his friends during the 1990s, as well as of the family atmosphere in the house in Sant Gregori and of some family trips. With regard to his travels, the reports from the Nicaraguan city of Bluefields, where the photographer spent a few weeks in 1994, as part of this city¿s twinning with Girona, stand out above all others. The collection is completed by about 500 positives from the family archive that cover the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s.

Conditions for access

Related documentation

Author and date(s)

JAS, 2021-2022.

Sources

Diari de Girona (1990-2000) and textual information from the same collection.