Browse the Layna Serrano Photo Archive

It was delivered in July 1971 to the Provincial Council together with the bibliographic collections and the documentation from his library and personal archive by the provincial chronicler Mr. Francisco Layna Serrano (1893 – 1971).

The photographic collection brings together more than 1,631 images, dated between 1917 and 1970. Most of them correspond to almost a hundred and a half towns in the province of Guadalajara, but there is no shortage of different towns in Asturias, Ávila, Badajoz, Burgos, Ciudad Real , Jaén, La Rioja, Madrid, Málaga, Segovia, Soria, Toledo, Valencia, Valladolid, Zaragoza, which were the object of interest in the studies carried out by the wise man from Alcarria.

They are, therefore, a splendid graphic reflection of the in-depth studies that our character carried out on various topics related to the history of art: 689 images have architectural aspects as their central theme, among which 144 views of churches, 285 of castles and 218 of sculpture. There are also a considerable number (almost 300) on ethnographic issues, in addition to those that document various aspects of the life and professional career of the character himself. Of the set, 1,175 conserve the negatives (29 glass, 606 acetates and 540 in 35 mm rolls) and 1,412 are period positives. Most of the photographs were taken by Layna Serrano himself, although there are also those signed by other photographers and stamped by different photographic laboratories, some of special prestige, such as Tomás Camarillo, A. Baños, Andrada, José Reyes, García Garrabella, Marí, Leocadio Zafra, Pedro Archilla and others linked to the province of Guadalajara; as well as others from different parts of Spain: A. Linares (Toledo), Muñoz (Ciudad Real), Alberto Muro, A. Vela and H. Ortega (La Rioja), Mier (Burgos) and Arcos (Huelva), etc.