Lecture «Photography and heritage: Valentí Fargnoli and the cataloguing and recovery of architectural and artistic property in Catalonia during Noucentisme»

By Carmen Perrotta, art historian and specialist doctor in 20th century history of photography, and Montserrat Baldomà, photograph conservationist, historian and photographer

Tuesday, October 8, 19.30h - Casa de Cultura de Girona
Free access (limited places)

Photography and heritage share a long tradition of going hand in hand. The efforts to find out about and to protect artistic heritage have been most significant in France and the United Kingdom, countries where photography, since very early on, has formed a part of the system of knowledge, which led to discovering a new way of seeing and passing on cultural heritage, especially architecture.

This architectural inheritance was shown in projects created in this country towards the end of the 19th century, one of the most significant being the Repertori iconogràfic d'Espanya, under the direction of Jeroni Martorell, which comprehensively documents the artistic heritage of the country, using the most strict scientific criteria for the «El arte en España» display at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition.

To accomplish this project, with the collaboration of Adolf Mas, they enlisted a small but experienced team of photographers, one of them being Valentí Fargnoli, who travelled throughout the area capturing an extraordinary collection of photographs on the architectural and artistic history of the peninsula that is still considered an essential reference today.

Lecture video

Lecture «Valentí Fargnoli: the lens and viewpoint as an instrument of representation»

By Marta Grassot, art historian and archivist

Tuesday, November 19, 20 h - Casa de Cultura de Girona
Free access (limited places)

The lens and the viewpoint, two elements perfectly associated with the world of photography, become the basis from which we will explain Fargnoli's viewpoint as a photographer and his composition technique as an artist throughout his professional career.

Fargnoli knew how to show the world in a captivating way and this resulted in an excellent quality of photography in all the genres that he explored, from commissioned photography to competitions. Focusing on the main particularities of the different Fargnoli photography archives that have been conserved, we will identify and analyze the steps Fargnoli took that would lead him to become one of the best photographers of the 20th century. At the same time, we will also compare Fargnoli with other great international photographers to conclude that his work can be considered one of the best references in the history of photography, not only in Catalonia, but well beyond our borders.