Last Friday afternoon, Room A of the Vilamuseu hosted the presentation of the Linares Ortiz photographic collection that the family of the Vila Joiosa photographer has donated to the Town Hall. This is a collection of more than 120,000 photographs from 1920 to 2003, of incalculable historical value for Vila Joiosa and the Marina Baixa region.
In February 2021, after conversations between the councillor for Historical Heritage of La Vila Joiosa, Xente Sebastià; and the directors of the Municipal Archives, Albert Alcaraz; and Vilamuseu, with José Luis and Antonio Linares Jiménez, the family of the photographers, they offered the Town Hall the collection of photographs of their father, José Linares Serrano, and their grandfather, Antonio Linares Ortiz.
"When the Linares Ortiz family contacted us and we saw the value of this photographic collection, we could only thank them for their donation and we quickly looked for a way to get hold of this collection through the corresponding procedures to recover it, conserve it and open it to the people of La Vila Joiosa," explained the councillor for Historical Heritage, Xente Sebastià. The councillor pointed out that among the few photographs they have been able to verify from the collection there are already emblematic places and historical moments of the town, "which show part of the cultural and historical heritage of the municipality that has disappeared", which is why the historical value of the photographic collection for the municipality is "incalculable".
The joint report by the directors of the Vilamuseu and the Municipal Archive proposed that this collection should be included in the municipal historical heritage collections, for its proper conservation, research and dissemination. To date, it is not possible to calculate the exact number of photographs that make up the collection, but sources at the Vila Joiosa museum estimate that there are well over 120,000 photographs on different photographic positive supports, and negatives on glass and celluloid plates, ordered and labelled, which illustrate with professional quality the history, landscapes and daily life of La Vila Joiosa and its region between 1920 and 2003.
"It is a unique, irreplaceable collection, extraordinary in its quantity and quality, with a great chronological scope (six generations of Vila Joiosa residents) and thematic scope, which not all towns and counties are lucky enough to preserve. It can be assured that its historical value is incalculable," said the mayor of La Vila Joiosa during the presentation.
Linares Ortiz" grant for training in conservation and restoration of museum collections
The collection has been physically transferred to the Vilamuseu, which has adequate space and facilities for its management, and for which the Vila Joiosa Town Council has already announced the first "Linares Ortiz grant". This is a grant for training in conservation and restoration of museum collections, with a duration of 12 months for an amount of 9,600 euros per year. This scholarship is aimed at graduates in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage or equivalent, and will be run jointly with the Municipal Archive. This grant will be available annually from 2022, and its main task will be the cataloguing, conservation and restoration of this and other photographic collections deposited in the archive and the museum.
The City Council has already equipped the Vilamuseu with a professional scanner of the highest resolution (up to 12,000 pixels per inch), which will make it possible to obtain digital images of optimum quality, so that it will not be necessary to manipulate the negatives afterwards. The digital images will be stored in high, medium and low resolution, for different uses, in a jointly managed repository. This will create an indexed image bank to facilitate searches, for public consultation, provided that the images bear the signature of Linares Ortiz.
Given the enormous volume of the photographic collection, it is estimated that the work could extend over a period of more than 50 years.