Photography shop in Berga with over 2 million historical documents closes

Foto Luigi, a 103-year-old shop around an hour north of Barcelona that owns more than two million historical documents, will close permanently on December 31. 

The lack of interest of new entrepreneurs to keep the store open left the owners no choice but to shut the business down, and the historical materials will be donated to the regional archive.

The photography shop is set in a four-story building, filled with historical documents about Berga, a town not far from the Pyrenees mountains.  

The shop displays portraits of people, landscapes, festivals and cultural heritage, and through its imagery became a window to peek into the past century. 

A long history

Climent and Manel Escobet, the third-generation owners of the store, have spent three years searching for their replacements, without success. “The shop would have to be run by a photographer and photographers have a longing for freedom, which a shop reduces,” explained Manel to the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

The store started as a gift shop under the name ‘La Camèlia’ and was turned into a photography shop by the children after the civil war. They learned the trade from a war refugee and continued the business with their own kids, who currently run it. 

"It is a sad farewell when you see that it's over and you can't do anything. There is no other way out,” Escobet concluded.

La Patum

The oldest photo in the shop is one of La Patum, an annual traditional festival in Berga, taken by mining engineer Rafael Lozano in 1868. The festival was named ‘a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ by UNESCO, and its importance is explained in an episode of our Filling the Sink podcast.

Manel Escobet says La Patum is what he photographed the most over the years, shooting it uninterruptedly for 50 years from 1973 to 2022. "I have always found it a fascinating subject. The privilege of having a party with an infinite range of aesthetic possibilities, right in front of home," Escobet explained.

Foto Luigi will be open for two days a week from November until its closure on December 31. After the shop closes, the duo will sort the material to donate it to the regional archive where it will be preserved.

Closing bookstores

Foto Luigi is one of several shops closing down in Berga lately, a phenomenon that is also occurring in Barcelona where bookstores Alibri and Cómplices are also closing permanently by the end of the year.

Alibri opened in 1925 as an initiative of the German publishing house Herder, in Freiburg. The owner decided not to continue the business and plans on closing the store by the end of the year. 

Cómplices, meanwhile, has been one of the most important locations selling LGBTQIA+ literature, and announced its closure on December 31.