The Centre de la Imatge Mas Iglesias of Reus will incorporate 215 photographs from the Josep Fuster collection after the signing of a loan agreement formalized on Friday the 22nd between the Ajuntament de Reus and the Museu de Reus. The transfer comes after the recovery work initiated in 2023 on the work of the photographer linked to l'Alforja.
The operation has a greater dimension than the initial figure. The 215 images that are now entering the CIMIR are only part of a much larger archive, consisting of 6,000 negatives, recovered from the centenary of Fuster's birth and still awaiting a complete transfer for its definitive preservation.
The Ateneu promoted the digitization of 6,000 negatives in 2023
The signing of the agreement was held at the Centre de la Imatge Mas Iglesias with Daniel Recasens, councilor for Culture and Linguistic Policy of the Ajuntament de Reus, and Marc Ferran, director of the Museu de Reus. The collection comes from the Ateneu Cultural Josep Taverna.
The event concludes a phase of work initiated in 2023, when the Ateneu promoted the digitization and cataloging of the 6,000 photographic negatives preserved of Josep Fuster on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. That process allowed for the organization of an archive of 6,000 negatives from which this first transfer to the Reus facility now comes.
The images incorporated into the CIMIR are the same ones that were part of the book Germans de foc i cançons and the exhibition with the same title, which had already been seen in Reus and in La Selva del Camp.
The 215 images capture Siurana, the 1952 Jubilee, and daily life
The collection brings together scenes of daily life, landscapes of Siurana, the 1952 Jubilee festivities, and excursions through Aragon. The incorporation into the CIMIR will allow the material to be preserved and made available for public consultation for personal, academic, or research purposes.
Marc Barceló, commissioner of the Fuster Year and secretary of the Ateneu Cultural Josep Taverna, placed the value of the archive in the context in which it was created, marked by cultural repression during Francoism.
"It is not a domestic collection; it is the testimony of an era, of a generation, and of a territory" - Marc Barceló, commissioner of the Fuster Year and secretary of the Ateneu Cultural Josep Taverna
Barceló added that the photographer's work offers a deep look at the territory and explained that Fuster worked with discretion and cunning in times of repression. In parallel to his photographic activity, he was the first to teach many young people from l'Alforja to write in Catalan and acted as a clandestine intellectual reference for several generations.
For now, the agreement signed in Reus affects 215 photographs, but the transfer is planned as the first step to move the 6,000 original negatives to the Museu de Reus for their definitive preservation in the future.