When the Catalan photographer Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, 1937) passed away, in 1998, he left behind almost fifty years of professional practice, and an archive of over 80.000 photographic negatives.
In 2010, it was my role to start a conversation with Miserachs’s heirs, previously approached through MACBA advisors, so as to draft a plan with a view to drafting a plan by which the photographer’s archive of negatives could be lent to the Museum’s Study Center on a long term basis. It was required that this plan would successfully combine the archive owners’ private interests and the museum’s public services, such as accessibility to the archive materials, availability for research, effective dissemination of the archive’s contents, etc.
The agreement resulting from these conversations was signed by MACBA and the Miserachs family at the beginning of 2011, and the photographer’s family transferred to the Study Center the entire archive, including not just the negatives but also the photographer’s notebooks, contracts, invoices and correspondence, as well as Miserachs’ collection of photobooks and books about photography.
