Fons Ramón Vilà Sanllehí

Ramon Vila Sanllehí Fonds

Ramon Vilà Sanllehí (Girona 1944-2010) was a photographer and artist from Girona. He started as an amateur photographer. He was an enthusiastic contributor to the weekly paper Presència and other contemporary magazines such as Serra d¿Or. He shared the Actini photography and advertising studio with Josep Maria Boladeras and specialized in photographing the work of numerous painters and sculptors, including Domènec Fita, Marcel Martí and Emília Xargay, most of the whom were part of the Girona Group, founded in 1950. The fonds also contain photographs of different subject matter such as gallery, cultural and sporting events.

The photographs are highly artistic. The images are powerful, an effect obtained by strong contrasts of light and shadow that create a dramatic difference between the whites and the blacks, dramatically accentuated by the arrangement of the grain in the images, very characteristic of the photographic material used at the time.

With Joaquim Ferrer he published Gironins d¿avui: 100 personatges (Fundació Valvi, 2006).

Area of identification
Reference code
CAT INSPAI 63
Level of description
Collection
Title
Ramon Vila Sanllehí Fonds
Date(s)
Dates of creation and addition: ca. 1964-2010
Volume and support
40,000 images, negatives and prints on different supports (acetate plastic, polyester plastic, paper), in different formats 6 × 6 cm, 6 × 9 cm, 9 × 12 cm, 35 mm, 18 × 24, black and white, and color. Also several films, 2 enlargers, cameras and photographic objects.
Context area
Name of producer(s)
Ramon Vilà Sanllehí (Girona 1944-2010)
Producer history
He was a photographer from Girona who worked started out as an amateur and became more professional throughout his life. He also worked as a bank employee. He was married to Maria Àngels Bancells Viladomà. Ramon Vilà was an enthusiastic contributor to the weekly paperPreséncia during the trying yet hopeful stage of the restoration of democratic freedoms and self-government in Catalonia in the 1960s and 1970s. He also participated in the production of several films within Grup Girona (formed among others by Enric Marquès, Emilia Xargay and Joaquim Casellas). Among them És ben difícil matar el petit monstre que tots portem dins (Jordi Lladó, 1969), to which he also contributed as a cameraman, stands out. He shared the Actini photography and advertising studio with Josep Maria Boladeras and specialized in photographing the work of numerous painters and sculptors such as Domènec Fita and Marcel Martí. With Joaquim Ferrer he publishedGironins d¿avui: 100 personatges (Fundació Valvi, 2006). Ramon Vilà i Sanllehí was part of the generation that through culture and the arts confronted the marginalization of Catalan society by the Franco dictatorship.
Archive history
In March 2021, the photographer¿s daughter, Iolanda Vilà, contacted INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge to inquire about the possibility of donating the fonds to the Centre, which took place on September 16, 2021. In September 2021, restorer Anna Ferrer carried out a general inspection of the photographs in the Ramon Vilà fonds, with the aim of assessing their state of conservation and need for treatment prior to digitizing them and preparing an assessment report on the state of conservation. According to Anna Ferrer, all the photographic material was in plastic and especially in glassine sleeves), which is why the fonds is mostly free of dust and dirt. But these sleeves, which prevent the material from becoming dusty, also give rise to deterioration problems. The fonds suffered from chemical decomposition of the acetate media, which will worsen if the conditions of close protection and storage of the material are not adequate. Stickers were found, especially on the slides, which needed to be removed. And some photographs had microbiological infections that needed to be treated with disinfectant. During the years 2021 and 2022, SNC, CM, MGF and AFM made a preliminary inventory of the fonds in which they indicated the following fields: background, author, title, dates, place, municipality, characters, observations, format, media, color. Completion of the pre-inventory is expected in 2024.
Details of entry
On January 18, 2022, the donation agreement for the Ramon Vilà i Sanllehí photographic fonds and transfer of usage rights to the Diputació de Girona was signed by the author¿s daughter, Iolanda Vilà Bancells, and the Diputació de Girona.
Content area and structure
Scope and content
This is a fonds mainly dedicated to portraying the work of Girona artists such as Emília Xargay, Domènec Fita and Salvador Dalí, among others. Still, it also contains such subject matter as family life and gallery, cultural and sporting events. The photographs are very artistic. The images are powerful, an effect obtained by strong contrasts of light and shadow that create a dramatic difference between the whites and the blacks, dramatically accentuated by the arrangement of the grain in the images, very characteristic of the photographic material used at the time. The photographer controlled every aspect of the image creation process, including development, which he carried out in his garage, where there was a space for a dark room with a red light to make paper prints. For this, he had two enlargers, one universal and one for negatives and 6 × 6 slides. The fonds contains approximately 900 positive images (vintage prints by the same author); approximately 40,000 images on plastic media (polyester and acetate), composed of 6 slides x 6, 6 x 9, 9 x 12, and negative 6 x 6, 6 x 9 and 35 mm. There are also notebooks with lists related to the negatives and slide envelopes, notebooks explaining how he made the photographs, cameras and photography material and film. The images are mostly black and white; 10% are color. Some of the most important subject matter in the fonds, based on the lists and indexes of archives prepared by the author, are: weddings, portraits and passport photos, music festivals, family reports (summer vacation, skiing in the Alps, etc.), plays (summer theater, Beckett room, etc.), sports (swimming, tennis, handball, climbing, outings, soccer, etc.), trips (Paris, Morocco, etc.), political rallies, forest fires, folk dances and, above all, works of architecture, reproductions of paintings, exhibitions and sculpture. Among the reports are some for the magazine Presència, for the magazine CAU, for GATEPAC of the College of Architects of Girona, for the magazine Serra d¿Or, Actini photographs and personal photographs. The geographical scope of the photographs is mainly the region of Girona, but some reports contain images from Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Europe.
Conditions for access and use area
Conditions for access
Free and open access.
Related documentation area
Related documentation
The producer and author of the fonds had a kept notebook with writing and sketches in which he explained step by step how achieved his highly contrasted images with the aim of having his technique studied and perfected. The film És ben difícil de matar el monstre que tots portem a dintre can be viewed on the YouTube channel of the Centre for Image Research & Diffusion (CRDI).
Control of description area
Author and date(s)
Lydia Ballester, August 2022. Jordi Algué, October 2022.
Sources
Administrative documentation related to the acquisition and technical treatment of the fonds. Descriptive list provided by Ramon Vilà¿s family.
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Location Legal notice Diputació de Girona 2018