Producer history
Rafael Vilarrubias was born in Igualada in 1905, and died in Banyoles in 1953. He embarked on his professional career in the world of images with gallery commercial photography in Banyoles (before that he worked as a clerk in an Igualada factory).
He opened his first premises in the Born street in Banyoles, and subsequently moved to the dels Valls street in the same town. He took portrait photographs as well as landscapes, views, and social events in Banyoles and nearby towns and villages.
In 1932 he began to work as a photojournalist for the newspaper La Vanguardia, and he published there a large number of photographs until 1937: 12 on the front page and 27 on the inside pages, in the graphic-chronicle section. Alongside that he was also contributing to the graphic newspaper Día Gráfico until 1939, when the newspaper ceased to publish.
There he published 38 pictures, particular of the Republican rearguard in the Spanish Civil War, and other political events of the time, particularly in Banyoles and its environs.
From 1947 to 1953 he did assignments for the local Banyoles magazine Horizontes (now called Revista de Banyoles).
Over that period he went on combining his work as a press photographer with his work in portraits in his studio and in the open air.
He did much to popularise the cinema in the Pla de l¿Estany area. He had filming equipment as from 1935, and used it to produce documentaries on social, leisure and political events in Banyoles and its surroundings, which he showed in halls and cinemas in the area, alongside the fashionable films of the day.
Archive history
During his professional career, the photographer Rafael Vilarrubias kept negatives or prints of his work in his own workshop In the dels Valls street. Copies were also kept at the newspapers and magazines he contributed to, and by his gallery¿s clients, who bought his pictures. After the photographer¿s sudden death in 1953, the family sold some of the material, which went into the care of institutions or private individuals; another part of the work went astray, and only the pictures most closely related to the family or to private affairs were kept by the family, in the form of plastic negatives or prints, some of which were mounted in cardboard albums. Thus from that time onwards the fonds became completely fragmented, mutilated and dispersed.
As regards the material he had produced for various publications such as the La Vanguardia newspaper, the newspaper itself kept prints in a store away from the newspaper, and they were digitised.
The whereabouts of pictures he published in other newspapers such as Día Gráfico or the magazine Horizontes, now called Revista de Banyoles, for whom Vilarrubias made contributions, remains unknown.
In 2000, the photographer¿s grandson Esteve Vilarrúbies began the task of recovering the fonds, which included gallery portraits, pictures of social events in Banyoles, belonging to local people or to Banyoles Town Council. Some of the pictures kept by the newspaper La Vanguardia were also recovered in digital format.
The Vilarrubias family assigned the Rafael Vilarrubias Fonds in digital format on 16 July 2006 to INSPAI, the Image Centre of the Diputació de Girona, to enrich the Emili Massanas i Burcet Image Archive¿s fonds.
As for its treatment at the archive, the fonds is included in the Archive¿s Guide to the Fonds as a personal and family fonds.
Regarding the dissemination work carried out by Diputació de Girona¿s INSPAI, the Image Centre, in addition to attending to any consultations coming in from users, whether via the website or in person, the fifth volume of the photograph publication
Quaderns de Fotografia, devoted to the Rafael Vilarrubias Fonds, was published in April 2007.
Details of entry
Incorporation was by means of an assignment contract for the fonds of the photographer Rafael Vilarrubias signed by Diputació de Girona and Mrs. Carme Vilarrubias, daughter of the photographer and holder of the copyright and usage rights, on 19 July 2006.
