Librarian and photographer José Afonso Furtado dies at 72

In a message shared with Lusa, the board of directors of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation expressed its regret at the passing of José Afonso Furtado.

Editor and writer Francisco José Viegas, former Secretary of State for Culture, said goodbye to José Afonso Furtado, "to whom the life of books and libraries in Portugal owes so much", in a message published on the social network X.

On this same social network, José Afonso Furtado was one of the pioneering figures in Portugal, being one of the most active national users in the first years of the network's existence and even being placed on a list of the best Twitter accounts of 2011 by the North American magazine Time.

"José Afonso Furtado is the Borges of Twitter, a Portuguese librarian who brings his pure love for all things related to books and publishing to the Twittersphere," the magazine wrote at the time.

Born in 1953 in Alcobaça, José Afonso Furtado graduated in Philosophy from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon in 1976 and graduated in Photography from the Portuguese Institute of Photography, between 1981 and 1984, having directed the History of Photography course, according to the biography made available by Gulbenkian and the information available on Infopédia.

According to the foundation, Furtado was deputy director-general of the Directorate-General for Cultural Action, president of the Portuguese Institute of Books and Reading, member of the Superior Council of Portuguese Libraries and member of the Advisory Board of the Portuguese Center of Photography.

He directed the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Art Library between 1992 and 2011, having been "responsible for the technological modernization of the library and the creation of the reference service".

Gulbenkian also highlighted that "as a photographer, he is represented in several collections, both private and public", such as the Center for Photographic Studies in Coimbra, the Élysée Museum in Lausanne, and the National Library of France.

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