Valentí Fargnoli was one of the most important photographers of the first half of the 20th century in Girona. His photographs reflect his wandering gaze, capturing the life and landscapes of Girona and immortalising times that were slipping away amidst many changes.
The wandering photographer
In 2025, we celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Valentí Fargnoli, whose photographic work has now entered the public domain.
INSPAI (the Image Centre of the Diputació de Girona) holds the photographer's collection and has made all of his images from this and other collections held at the Centre, available to the public. In total, more than 1,600 images, including glass plates and paper copies, are available for free download through the INSPAI website and on Europeana.eu.
Valentí Fargnoli has recently gained recognition and become the subject of study for his vast and valuable photographic work. His photographs are memories of lost times that have become pillars of Girona's collective imagination. They invite us to travel back in time and rediscover the landscapes and cultural of the first decades of the 20th century: scenes of everyday life, disappeared trades, undeveloped coastal spaces, the rich and vast artistic heritage of villages and towns, popular traditions and so many other elements that frame the lives of those who have preceded us.
A life in focus
Valentí Fargnoli Iannetta was born in Barcelona on 12 April 1885.
His parents, from the Italian region of Naples, had emigrated to Catalonia to make a fortune and intended to return to Italy when they gave birth to their first child, but he was born before they could leave. They soon returned to their country of origin, but the challenges of life meant that the Fargnoli family soon returned to Catalonia and settled there permanently.
Fargnoli began his professional career in the field of photography at just 21 years old. However, he never had his own photographic studio and instead specialised in selling his own postcards through third parties, doing portrait photography and accepting commissions from public and private institutions.
This fact turned him into what today we would consider a 'wandering freelancer' looking for new customers and new places where he could take portrait images to sell.
The Spanish iconographic repertoire
In 1918, Valentí Fargnoli was commissioned by the studio of the Barcelona photographer Adolf Mas and became his delegate in the Girona and Lower Aragon regions with the aim of documenting and providing monthly photographs of them.
Fargnoli travelled around most of these places with his bicycle taking images that would become part of the Spanish iconographic repertoire, an ambitious project that aimed to create a graphic inventory of the Spanish territory and, on which Adolf Mas's establishment, had become an official photographic studio as an iconographic provider.
The artist photographer
Most of his photographs are easily recognisable and identifiable, as he was one of the few photographers of the time who dated and signed the negatives, obviously aware of his documentary task in addition to his artistic work.
Many of these inscriptions have been lost due to subsequent interventions made by the photographer and protégé Sebastià Martí on the original glass negatives. He erased Fargnoli's authorship to continue reproducing his photographs, while signing them as his own.
Witnesses of the early 20th century
Fargnoli's photographs make us relive past lives and a world is revealed to us every time we look at them. They are witnesses of an era that invite us to reflect on our present-day actions and which, like the grain sifted by the peasant women in La Roca, add to Girona's graphic history, building up its visual memory.
Further reading
- Joan Boadas i Reset, Fotografia en temps de noucentisme: Adolf Mas, Valentí Fargnoli, Jeroni Martorell i el Repertori Iconogràfic. Girona: Ajuntament de Girona, 2018.
- Josep Clara i Resplandis, 'Els Martí, fotògrafs de Girona', Revista de Girona, Nº. 324 (January-February 2021)
- Carmen Perrotta, 'Bicicleta i càmera en mà: Valentí Fargnoli a l’Arxiu Mas', Girona: Revista de Girona, dossier Valentí Fargnoli, Nº. 316 (September-October 2019)
- Carmen Perrotta, 'Valentí Fargnoli, delegat de l’Arxiu Mas', Girona: INSPAI, Centre de la Imatge de la Diputació de Girona, 2021..
- Maria Àngels Suquet i Fontana, 'El punt de vista: Valentí Fargnoli, el fotògraf ambulant', Sant Feliu de Guíxols: L’Arjau, revista cultural, Nº. 87 (February 2024)
- Valentí Fargnoli. Una mirada persistent. Girona: Diputació de Girona, Quaderns de Fotografia; 10, 2019.