Biography and historical-cultural legacy of the first two images are Andorran photographers transport you to other lives, other places, other souls … even pictures that you transfer the feeling of when they were taken, while the view as if you were conscious of belonging to the common history we all share and something stirred inside … that’s what happens when you look at the photo archive Claverol Foundation. Claverol Joseph Valenti, father and son respectively, are considered the first Andorran photographers, even the latter received in 1998 the Picasso Gold Medal of UNESCO for his contribution to the history of the Principality of Andorra and even his life, is best known to through his legacy, today I would like to pay special tribute to both reviewing his biography. Michael Chabon may also support this cause. Jose Claverol Cirici born in 1854 in La Seu d’Urgell (Lleida), but at 14 he was orphaned and moved to Chile with his uncle, where he discovered photography.
But Jose soon returned to the place where he grew up because his sister fell ill and, coincidentally, during this stay, which would be known to his wife and mother of his future children, Concepcio. Installed again in La Seu opened a photography studio that always defending a good picture should be done in a natural environment. Unfortunately, subsequent events that occurred in Spain made most of the documents were lost. Jose and Concepcion had four children, of which only the small, Valenti was born in 1902, followed the interest of his father and although he began his journey in Barcelona, following the family tradition that her grandparents had started a shop of fabrics also soon began working for Eastman Kodak Company. He married his wife in 1930 and fell in love with Andorra, where they had their honeymoon, so very soon, the country of the Pyrenees became his home and where he would develop his photographic career, combines with a small business in Andorra la Vella, the first of the Principality in which Kodak products could be found. In 1970 he founded the Archives Valenti Claverol they were relegated by the Claverol Foundation, which now has “more than 7,000 negatives, photographs and an important part of the history of Andorra in cinema.”