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Carme Gotarde Camps

1892-1953
Carme Gotarde Camps

Biography

Carme Gotarde was born in Olot in 1892. She was the daughter of Antoni Gotarde Bartolí and Antònia Camps, a teacher in Olot who no longer worked in the profession. Having received an artistic education from her father she excelled in photography. Nevertheless, throughout her life she also drew, painted, sculpted and worked with leather and glass. She soon started to receive prizes and distinctions in the field of artistic photography in competitions and exhibitions held in Spanish cities including Cadiz, (1915), Madrid (1916, 1921, 1927), Barcelona (1919 and 1928) and Saragossa (1929). The works submitted for these events were generally produced using the bromoli process and were mainly portraits, but they also included photographs of the landscapes around Olot.

She combined her artistic talents with her profession and earned her living as a portrait photographer working from her studio in the Plaça dels Capellans (now Esteve Ferrer), which she directed, almost certainly from 1912, when her father fell ill. She took photographs for the catalogues of the workshops in Sants and the Barberí foundry and contributed occasionally to various publications. Above all, however, she documented life in Olot during the two decades before the Spanish Civil War and her photographs marked the births, confirmations, marriages, ordinations, episcopal consecrations, school graduations and military recruitment of all those members of Olot society that passed through her studio to commemorate these events.

Following the custom established by her father, she displayed the portraits of some of the distinguished members of the community in the shop windows in the centre of town. In March 1921 she moved her residence to the second floor of Carrer de Sant Rafel 7 and she used this new location to exhibit some of her work.

After 1935, when her mother died, there is very little documentary data about Carme Gotarde. From 1944, if not before, we know that she lived half board in the Cor de Maria Convent in Olot, the nuns there having been photographed by her on numerous occasions. It was hard for her to practice photography and there are those who say that her last years were difficult ones scraping a living by teaching drawing to the children of relatives. In 1948 she moved house for the last time, almost certainly being obliged to do so, and took up her new residence in the Passeig de Miquel Blay. She died at the Cor de Maria Convent on 19 November 1953.

Bibliography

BATLLE BOSCH, Carles. Els morts (a propòsit de l’exposició de Carme Gotarde). Olot: El Cartipàs. Núm. 36, (nov. 2009), p.4.

BONFILL, Anna; MAYANS, Antoni; ROCA, Quim (coord.). Carme Gotarde Camps (1892-1953), fotògrafa. O...

See the bibliography