Area of identification
Reference code
CAT INSPAI 67
Level of description
Collection
Date(s)
Dates of creation and addition: 1979-2017
Volume and support
10,970 photographs, prints and negatives, black and white and color. Color slides in formats: 35mm, 6×6cm, 6×7cm, 7×7cm, 8.5×8.5cm. 35 mm color and black-and-white negatives.
Context area
Name of producer(s)
Kim Castells Benosa
Producer history
Joaquim Castells Benosa, known as Kim Castells (Barcelona, July 23, 1947), is a photographer, industrial designer, entrepreneur and, until 2022, owner with his wife of a rural hotel in Púbol. His career as a professional photographer began in 1978, and he published his first book in 1981. Since then, he has published more than 90 books of landscape, architecture and heritage photography. He is one of the photographers with the most published books.
He has worked for agencies such as Photostock and publishers such as Lunwerg. He has also worked occasionally as a photojournalist for the Sunday magazine supplement of the newspaper La Vanguardia, along with Màrius Carol; he has also contributed to the magazine Descobrir Catalunya.
He has collaborated with prominent authors of Catalan literature such as Josep Pla, Josep Maria de Sagarra, Joan Brossa, Lluís Racionero, Màrius Carol, Lluís Permanyer, Carme Riera and Baltasar Porcel. He has been a member of Vision and Fotocontacta. He has worked as a photographer on archeological sites in Morocco.
Archive history
The fonds was created from the author¿s activity as a professional photographer and corresponds to reports made in the region of Girona. The fonds was kept at his address. The author has been breaking up the fonds and proposing the acquisition of reports to different archives, town halls and cultural centres in Catalonia and Spain.
The Kim Castells fonds was kept at INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge from 2018 until the official acquisition of the reports, in June 2019. Four installments were made between December 19, 2018 and February 13, 2019.
In November 2020, he donated 132 publications free of charge to be incorporated into the INSPAI photographic and audiovisual documentation centre.
Details of entry
In April 2017, Kim Castells contacted INSPAI to communicate his intention to donate his fonds to the Centre, which was formalized in 2019. The photographs in the fonds were registered under Diputació de Girona file number 2018/9579, approved by Decree 2019/1497.
The fonds includes images of Girona counties. With this acquisition, the Diputació de Girona became the owner of the images and exclusive owner of the usage rights (copyright, reproduction, public communication and transformation) to these images. This ownership was acquired until the fonds enter the public domain and without any territorial limit.
On November 16, 2020, he donated books, magazines and bibliographic material through a simple donation form.
Content area and structure
Scope and content
Photographer Kim Castells¿ fonds includes images from 1979 to the present. His collection includes a large part of the geography of Catalonia, Spain and other countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, where he worked reporting on archeological digs.
Among Castells¿ work during his career as a photographer are reports about areas within the region of Girona. Most of the images acquired by INSPAI correspond to this activity.
The subject matter is primarily natural mountain, coastal and municipal landscapes. It also documents the country¿s heritage and architecture, such as reports on different Catalan country houses, providing an almost unprecedented glimpse of exterior views and, above all, many interior rooms.
The reports on the region of Girona include the Costa Brava, Cerdanya, Garrotxa, Olot and spas, Cadaqués, L¿Escala, La Selva, Girona¿s Passion of Christ, photographs in the book Mars (photographs of the Costa Brava) and pantocrators in Girona.
The fonds also includes 132 book and magazine publications. Noteworthy among them are 59 magazines from the specialist photography store Casanova Professional, 9 from Kodak Fotografia Internacional, 48 advertising catalogs for cameras and photographic material, and several photography manuals.
Related documentation area
Related documentation
The author has been breaking up the fonds and proposing the acquisition of reports to different archives, town halls and cultural centres in Catalonia and Spain.
He has made transfers, donations and sales to the following organizations:
-Diputació de Girona.
-Historical Archive of Poblenou (250 photographs).
-Diputació de Girona (various contact sheets).
-Consell Comarcal of the Alt Empordà (Cadaqués, 300 images from the book).
-Ajuntament de Vic (1,000 photographs).
-Consell General d¿Aran (850 photographs).
-Maestrat de Terol (650 photographs).
-Navarra Photographic Library (2,000 slides).
Control of description area
Author and date(s)
Roger Mirabent, September 2022.
Lydia Ballester, August 2022.
Sources
Administrative documentation related to the acquisition and the fonds.
