Centre Excursionista de Catalunya
About the institution
The Hiking Association of Catalonia has one of the country's most important historical photographic archives and contains almost 750,000 photographs.
The Association adopted photography as soon as it was founded, towards the end of the 19th century, to disseminate knowledge by means of collections of photographs to be projected to illustrate the conferences held at its headquarters, as well as photographs taken to illustrate the Association's publications.
In 1909 Geroni Martorell set up L'inventari Gràfic de Catalunya, an offspring of European projects such as the Mission Héliographique in France. It aimed to document the country's artistic and cultural heritage and 1909 is considered to be the year in which the photographic archive was established.
The first plates in the archive, produced using the collodion process, date from the 1860s, and the collection was added to, almost uninterruptedly, throughout the rest of the 19th century, continuously throughout the 20th century, and until the present day.
Although, to begin with, the geographical scope of the archive was limited to Catalonia, the interests of the association's members were much wider and while, understandably, a very large number of the photographs are of Catalonia, there are a significant number from around the world, including the Pyrenees, Europe, the USA, Argentina Japan and Macau.
The archive contains images produced using a wide variety of techniques including such pre-photographic techniques as magic lantern images, as well as images produced using real photographic techniques, such as the collodion process, cellulose nitrate, dry plate (glass and paper), acetate and polyester. It has an outstanding collection of more than a thousand autochrome lumière images, albumen, cyanotype and pigment prints.
The collection comprises the work of more than a hundred photographers and covers a wide range of subject matter. Hiking and mountains are obviously well represented, but so are art, architecture, sport, engineering, ethnography, daily life and society in general.
The archive also has an interesting collection of cameras from all periods, enlargers, various items of other equipment, books and technical documents.
The interesting heritage conserved by the Association has been augmented over the years thanks to donations made by its members from their own archives, as well as by non-members who have also entrusted the Association to conserve their archives.
In 2009, the year which marked its hundredth year, the archive received extraordinary funding from "la Caixa's" Obra Social Foundation to modernise its facilities, apply conservation methods to its collection, digitalise and catalogue its archive, and to raise awareness of its archive amongst the general public by means of computer information technologies.
The archive provides members, private individuals and organisations all the services normally provided by archives and image banks, such as the provision of images on paper and digital media for study and research, publication, exhibition, and TV broadcast. The archive also organises regular, free activities and conferences for the general public, as well as travelling exhibitions which are made available to both public and private organisations.
