Remembering Christiano

Abel Alexander y Luis Priamo (Translated into English by Ann Wright)

In memory of Grete Stern and Anatole Saderman, masters of contemporary photography in Argentina.

My project is vast but, when it is finished, every historic stone and tree in the Argentine Republic, from the Atlantic to the Andes, will have been given new life by the lens of the camera obscura.(1)

José Christiano de Freitas Henriques Junior, known as Christiano Junior, is the only pioneer of Argentine photography to have left a written testimony to his life. This is perhaps why his figure arouses such interest. His photographic projects, ambitious and at times disproportionate, produced admirable pieces of documentary work, until recently only known in a partial or distorted fashion. This book attempts to rectify this situation by an anthology that is representative of that work, especially his photos of every day life, figures and customs shot in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, San Juan, San Luis, Catamarca, Tucumán, Salta and Jujuy from the early 1870s to the early 1880s. As far as we know, his photographs in Argentina were all taken between 1867 and 1883; prior to that he had worked in Brazil (evidence of which is found in local publications) and Uruguay.(2)

Christiano was born in 1832 in the Azores. We know he emigrated to Brazil in 1855 and from there continued on to Buenos Aires in 1867. We do not know where he learned photography or if he had lived anywhere else before going to the Americas. He appeared in the 1869 Argentine national census (under the shortened name of Christiano Junior) as a photographer, Portuguese, thirty-seven years old, domicile 159 Florida Street, Buenos Aires. Included in the census with him were his sons José Virginio, eighteen, and Federico Augusto, sixteen, both Portuguese and photographers, but not his wife, María Jacinta Fraga, which leads us to believe that he was either separated or a widower by then.

In about 1862 he was known to have set up as a photographer in Brazil, in Maceió, capital of the state of Alagoas, a small city founded thirty years earlier on the Atlantic coast just south of Recife. Photography flourished in Brazil in those days due to economic expansion and because Emperor Pedro II was himself a keen photographer and collector. By 1863 Christiano was plying his trade in Rio de Janeiro and the following year went into partnership with the photographer Fernando Antonio de Miranda; the association folded before the year was out.(3) During this period, he took a series of portraits of slaves, both in his studio and outside, which he printed in carte de visite format. He continued doing this in 1886 as the sole proprietor of the Photography and Art Gallery located at 45 Quitanda Street. The gallery offered a wide range of work and products including portraits on canvas, porcelain and ivory, cyanotypes, miniatures printed as postage stamps, life size enlargements, photo-painting in pastels and water colours, stereoscopic views, large transparencies printed on glass, photos of Indians and Blacks, portraits of famous Americans and Europeans, and reproductions of engravings by Morgado de Matheus published in a rare edition of Os Lusiadas (The Lusitanians). He presented the latter and a series of portraits at the second National Exhibition, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1866, winning a bronze medal.

That same year Christiano Junior also took a small number of photos of elephantiasis patients, almost certainly as a commission, which he put together in an album.(4) This series and the one of the slaves (the largest known collection prior to 1870 of photos of Blacks in Brazil) are the main record of his passage through that country. To Christiano, and other photographers like him, the portraits of black slaves belonged to the ‘local colour’ genre and were of interest to Europeans as exotica. He advertised a varied collection of Blacks and their customs for people going back to Europe.(5) The poses adopted by the Blacks in Christiano’s Rio studio were similar to those of the fisherman, the orange vendor and the newspaper sellers he took a few years later in his Buenos Aires studio. In December 1866, he set up a business in Rio with Bernardo José Pacheco that continued trading at the above-mentioned premises in Quitanda Street under the name Christiano Junior & Pacheco until 1875, several years after he had left for the River Plate. Christiano may have established the firm so that he could sell a going concern, since he left Brazil soon afterwards and did not actually ever work with that particular partner.(6)

Quite some time before settling in Buenos Aires, Christiano opened another business in Mercedes, Uruguay. From the printing on the back of his studio cards, we deduce that this was even before his partnership with Pacheco, perhaps in mid 1866, and that he continued the business for several years after arriving in Buenos Aires, probably through an employee. Initially the cards said the main office of Christiano Junior’s Photography and Art was in Rio de Janeiro, subsequently that it was in Buenos Aires. A large number of photos of that Mercedes studio are still in existence: it was situated in Asamblea Street (first in Tomás Viale’s house and then a block and a half after the square). This leads us to believe it was a business of some importance and certain dates suggest it remained open until 1869.

Christiano opened his first studio in Buenos Aires on 1 December 1867, in the above-mentioned premises at 159 Florida.(7) For several months prior to that he had exhibited his work in two of the city’s most important galleries: Fusoni and Francischelli. Despite the competitive market, his studio prospered. The 1869 census showed seven people working there besides the owner.(8) An examination of the studio’s albums, now in the National Archives, shows that it processed more than 4000 photographs between April of 1873 and September of 1875, that is, it served five clients per day. In 1871 Christiano took part in the national exhibition in Córdoba. The gold medal he received added to the prestige of the studio that had just moved to new premises at 160 Florida Street. It was still there in 1878 when Christiano sold it to Witcomb & Mackern, predecessor of the famous Witcomb Gallery (it became 208 Florida when the city’s streets were renumbered in 1875). In 1872 or 1873 he opened a branch he called Children’s Photography (9)at 118 Artes Street, between Cuyo and Cangallo, where he also installed a bath house. The building burned down on 8 March 1875 and only the odd camera was saved.(10) The studio was later reopened under the same name at 296 Victoria Street, but run this time by Christiano’s elder son, who had been his main collaborator.(11)

In April 1875 the Sociedad Rural Argentina held its first cattle show on a piece of land on the corner of Florida and Paraguay. Throughout this and the following year, excellent quality phototypes (12) of prize animals appeared in the Society’s journal Anales. They were among the first to be published in Argentina and were probably made (as well as the photographs) by Christiano Junior, who had a photo-engraving workshop in his studio and had joined the Sociedad Rural that year.(13) That Christiano photographed the second rural show, in 1876, is demonstrated by the lithographs of the prize-winning animals published in Anales bearing the inscription: Photography Christiano Junior. 208 Florida. In September of 1876 he presented the Society’s directors with a pencil portrait (possibly a photo-carbon) of their president, José María Jurado, to be hung in pride of place in the boardroom.(14) He remained the Society’s photographer until 1878 when he sold his studio. His name figures on the list of members in 1877, but not after that. He was always interested in meeting influential people, and men like Sarmiento, Mansilla, Luis Sáenz Peña and Adolfo Alsina posed in his studio.

In early 1876 Christiano offered for sale the first volume of an Album of Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic, with twelve shots of Buenos Aires and historical references in Spanish, French, English and German, fancy binding and covers with allegories in bas reliefs.(15) According to the introduction, the text was by Mariano Pelliza and Ángel Carranza. The images were: Buenos Aires (panoramic view), National Finance Administration Building, Palermo, Statue of General San Martín, First Gasworks, Central Station (of the Northern, Southern and Ensenada Railways), Government House, Congress Building, Plaza de Lorea, Foundling Hospital, Pueyrredón Bridge and Plaza de la Victoria. It was the first time this type of photo album had been published in Argentina; and only Christiano himself repeated such a thing in the 19th century. Other photographers often published their photos with short captions printed on the negative itself; this allowed clients to choose photos for the album they bought. Since it is hard to find two old albums with the same photos, we can deduce that this was the most common method and making each volume a piece on its own was a deliberate practice. Christiano’s albums, on the other hand, were all alike, with comments about each subject, similar to modern photo-reportage. All the photos in them had been taken and offered for sale over the preceding years: at the beginning of 1875, for instance, the photographer had proposed Scenes of Buenos Aires and Surroundings, for Framing, Albums and Stereoscopes.(16) In this 1876 album, and the subsequent one in 1877, there were no rural figures and customs: what is more, in all the scenes Christiano took of the city and province of Buenos Aires (now in the National Archives) there are only three photos of gauchos and criollo women in front of their shacks, which he never published, and none at all of people engaged in country tasks. His photographic vision reflected the educated thinking of the day, which wanted to jettison the pastoral and colonial Argentina so well documented by the photographers of the previous decade, notably Esteban Gonnet and Benito Panunzi.(17) Christiano was the only pioneer of Argentine photography to let this idea inform his work. Nevertheless, perhaps for commercial reasons, the album’s embossed leather cover shows four rural scenarios; and in only one of them is there a glimpse of a train in the distance.

His next album, published a year later, also contained twelve photos of street figures and customs interspersed with both contemporary and historic structures: Metropolitan Church, Scenes on the shore (washerwomen), Railway bridge to Ensenada, Scenes on the shore (net), Mouth of the Riachuelo, Santa Felicitas Chapel, Italian Hospital, Orange seller, Banco de la Provincia, Dr Valentín Alsina’s cenotaph, the San Fernando dock and General Brown’s suburban house. The photo of La Boca, the first known photo of this district, shows numerous Italian fishermen and demonstrates the photographer’s interest in recording plebeian aspects of progress: linked to the capital by a railway line, [La Boca] is one of its poor districts but has a promising future, said the commentary, written like the previous album in four languages (Italian replacing German on this occasion). In 1877, Christiano took a series of shots of the new National Penitentiary (now demolished), inaugurated on 22 May of that year in what is today Las Heras Avenue. They were sold in Christiano Junior and Son’s shop at 208 Florida Street, either as single photos or bound in albums, with their title pages and descriptions in three languages.(18) The authors of this article have not seen any of these albums, which may never have been compiled, but the negatives and copies of the photos are in the National Archives.

Christiano had other businesses in addition to the photography studio. We know he owned two bath houses; the aforementioned one in Artes Street and another, in partnership with Luis Martinier, at 193 Florida, which was depicted in a cartoon by Enrique Stein.(19) He also published books: in collaboration with Stein he produced Illustrated Buenos Aires. Commercial Calendar and New Arrival’s Guide for 1877;(20) and on his own, that same year, the series of brochures entitled Argentine Biographical Gallery, devoted to figures that had played an important role in public life.(21) The text was written by AJC and MAP [Ángel Justiniano Carranza and Mariano Antonio Pelliza] and each brochure had a lithograph of the figure in question. The drawings were by Ricardo Albertazzi and the lithographs probably done by Christiano himself, since he was credited as being the illustrator as well as the editor. One of the subscription points was 208 Florida, the editor’s premises.

When he sold his studio to Witcomb & Mackern in 1878, Christiano Junior was at a high point in his career. Within a very short space of time he had received two Argentine prizes—from the Argentine Scientific Society in 1876 and the Industrial Club in 1877—and two foreign prizes: at the United States Centenary Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 and the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1878. At the age of forty-six, he had considerable prestige and an established business, run by his son. The decision to sell up and leave Buenos Aires was apparently prompted by his need to take photos for his next Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic albums; he planned to devote a volume to each province. At first he had thought of hiring a photographer to do this work, but I came to the conclusion that however well I chose the person, it would be impossible for him to understand what I wanted artistically.(22) So in 1879 he set off on his artistic voyage, as he called it in his promotional material. As far as we know, he began in Rosario; from there he went to Córdoba, Río Cuarto, Mendoza, San Juan, San Luis, Catamarca, Tucumán, and finally Salta and Jujuy, which he reached in 1883. In the majority of cities, he set up a portrait studio, almost always in conjunction with a local photographer, while he went about shooting photos for his albums. A couple of months prior to his arrival in each city he would place advertisements in the local papers.

He arrived in Rosario in the April or May of 1879 and left for Córdoba in August.(23) We know of no scenes taken in Rosario, either in albums or single photos, if he took any, that is. There are, however, carte de visite portraits mounted on cards from his previous Buenos Aires businesses, to which he added an oval stamp with the words Artistic Voyage on the top curve, Christiano Junior underneath and Rosario in the middle, a format he used in all the other cities too. He arrived in Córdoba on 27 August and left on 31 October 1879.(24) There are no known scenes of his of Córdoba either, but there are various street characters, published in phototypes, in an undated Witcomb Gallery booklet containing images of peddlers and beggars from Córdoba, Mendoza, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán. The photographer’s name is not on these engravings, but the background used, the carpet and other decorative objects appear in portraits Christiano did in Buenos Aires—the Orange seller, for instance—although they are inverted because of the transfer of the negative to the platen press. From this we deduce that he did not travel with the negatives needed for his album, but sent them to Witcomb & Mackern, just as he did with his commercial portraits. On some of the cartes de visite taken in the provinces we read: for repeat orders contact Witcomb & Mackern, 208 Florida, Buenos Aires. However, these photos are not in the National Archives and are now thought to be lost.

At some stage between leaving Córdoba and opening a studio in Mendoza in March 1880, Christiano worked in Río Cuarto. A carte de visite portrait exists with his stamp and the name Río Cuarto on the back.(25) He reached Mendoza on 15 March 1880 and stayed there until 31 August 1881. In July he announced: people interested in buying a perfect collection of country customs and views of the ruins, square, main avenue, and other sites like El Challao, Lagunita, etc., should contact Christiano Junior Photography.(26) On 3 October 1880 an advertisement published in the San Juan newspaper La Unión notified citizens that he would be visiting the city between April and May the following year, but in mid-December the Mendoza press announced that the photographer Christiano Junior, now in San Juan, is pleased to inform the public, which gave him such a warm welcome, that he will be back in the city next January and stay for 15 days to take photographs.(27) He made a photographic trip into the Andes, which he recounted in such detail twenty years later in Corrientes that he must have kept a diary of the trip.(28) He left on 25 March 1881, taking the road to Uspallata, with six mules laden with dishes and provisions, folding table and chairs, camp beds, clothes, two tents and a camera for taking panoramic photos. He stayed for ten days at the landmark of Puente del Inca, taking photos, swimming and cooking. Then he climbed to Las Cuevas where he was snowed in for four days. He was back in Mendoza by 28 April and recommenced work in new premises in San Nicolás Street, where he remained for the rest of his stay.

On 23 October 1881 an advertisement in a San Luis newspaper announced: En route to Rosario, I will be staying fifteen days in San Luis and another few days in Villa Mercedes.(29) The following 15 January he informed people wanting a portrait taken, that he had opened an office at the Unión Hotel, in the last rooms on the south side, giving onto the street, and added that he would be in town only a month.(30) We have no proof that he ever stayed in Villa Mercedes. He may, in fact, have carried straight on to Rosario and Buenos Aires since he exhibited the panoramic views he had taken in Cuyo at the Continental Exhibition, which opened in the capital in March 1882.(31) He set off on his journey again in Catamarca where the lack (as far as the authors could ascertain) of any newspaper advertisement announcing commercial activity on his part suggests he did not set up a portrait studio. However, he did take scenes that appeared in his albums, possibly in early Autumn 1882, since he was in Tucumán at the end of July that year. He did not apparently take any photos in La Rioja, on his way to Catamarca, but he seems to have taken some in Santiago del Estero before reaching Tucumán. One is a studio portrait of a young boy, entitled Fish seller, which appears under Santiago del Estero in Witcomb’s above-mentioned lithographic catalogue. Another served as the basis for an engraving that appeared (with another ten of his photos) in Latzina’s dictionary under the caption: Santiago del Estero, Río Dulce, near the dam.(32) He worked in Tucumán, including a journey to Salta and Jujuy, for a good part of 1882 and the first half of 1883. In February that year he wrote in an advertisement in Salta: Christiano Junior and Son have opened their studio in Florida Street. He added that they would be there for two months and would receive orders for our work ‘Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic’.(33) He placed one last advertisement on 20 March and left for Jujuy, where he worked during April and May; in mid-June he was back in Tucumán. On the card of the commercial photos he took while there, the business name Christiano Junior and Son appears for the first time. Apparently, his son, often simply called Freitas by photo historians, joined his father either in the Tucumán capital itself or shortly before and accompanied him during the final stage of his journey around the Northwest.(34)

Certain documents illustrate the lengths Christiano went to in order to finance his work. In Mendoza he approached the provincial government to ask them to buy one or more copies of my work ‘Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic’ for the province. The size and scope of the work has meant that the costs incurred have increased and I cannot now cover them without recourse to official contributions. The total price, he added, would not be more than five hundred pesos fuertes.(35) The government would receive eighty to a hundred photos per year, which would cost eighty to a hundred pesos fuertes, paid on receipt. He said the work would take about four or five years to publish. On 28 September 1881 the Mendoza government agreed to buy one copy at the price and conditions laid down by the photographer. He made similar requests to the governments of San Luis (12/1/1882), Buenos Aires (9/5/1882), Córdoba (11/7/1882) and Tucumán (19/7/1882). On 29 July 1882 he offered his album to the Municipality of Tucumán, which replied in the affirmative, as long as the total value of the said work does not exceed five hundred pesos fuertes.(36) A year later, he delivered the five hundred photographs. As far as we know, this was the only complete collection of Scenes and Customs ever delivered, although it did not have captions or the photos of the coastal provinces, which in the end he never took.(37)

On 12 June 1883 Christiano bought a property of about 130 hectares called Quinta de los Azurmendi, in Arroyo Hondo, Monteros County, Tucumán.(38) There is evidence to suggest that he moved in between 1883 and 1884. Almost simultaneously he opened a photographic studio at 100 Laprida Street, Tucumán, in partnership with Eduardo A Lecoq, a photographer who was then in Buenos Aires but who was already known in Tucumán, according to the business’s inaugural advertisement.(39) If Christiano was thinking of leaving photography to run a farm a hundred kilometres from the city, he may have wanted a partner so he would get something from renting out his equipment. On 22 August 1884, on his own behalf and of his son José Freitas Henriques, he obtained a two thousand pesos loan from the National Bank, guaranteed by mortgaging his Arroyo Hondo farm with Eduardo A. Lecoq as joint debtor.(40) Together with his son he had obtained another five thousand pesos from the Santiago del Estero branch of the same bank. A year later a press announcement signed by Eduardo Lecoq claimed his partnership with Christiano Junior had been dissolved.(41) This, to our knowledge, effectively marks the end of Christiano’s photographic career, although in subsequent moments of penury, in Corrientes and Paraguay, he acted as agent for his son’s Buenos Aires studio and offered to work as a photograph lighter. So, in Tucumán he abandoned his great project of Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic. We assume, therefore, that he decided to change the direction of his life, and that this was not just a chance occurrence, given the property he acquired and the debts he incurred.

It is not entirely clear what he proposed cultivating on his farm, but we do have certain indications. In 1884 a Tucumán newspaper published an article entitled Wine Growing in the Republic, according to which a qualified person is at present in Buenos Aires collecting information about wine production in Argentina, with a view to producing a work on the subject to be published shortly.(42) It must have been referring to Christiano, who fifteen years later published an extensive volume entitled Practical Treatise on Wine Production and Spirits Distilling.(43) From reading it we realise the author’s previous interest in such matters, dating back to when he was a boy in the Azores. Even in Buenos Aires, busy with his photographic business, he found time to reflect upon agriculture,(44) to which we assume he devoted all his energies after settling in Arroyo Hondo.

From the mid-1880s onwards he also began writing regularly on various matters, in particular public health, hygiene and home medicine. He always tried to relate the things he was interested in to the common good, especially to the working classes. For instance, he considered the quality of wine and spirits important not only for improving the industry and creating wealth, but also for the health of the proletariat who were continually being poisoned by very bad quality brews. This concept, which mixed a humanist vision and Republican ideals with business and ‘industrious’ interests, was common in 19th-century progressive liberal circles.

His civic concerns—and his commitment to the area—were demonstrated by the fact that on 11 October 1886 he donated to the provincial government a piece of land 33 metres by 82 metres, in Arroyo Hondo, to build a chapel and a school.(45) In the same vein, he published a long article a few weeks later under the pseudonym Veritas in which he discussed the date of the founding of Villa de Medinas, a town near Arroyo Hondo.(46) However, on 21 January 1889 Christiano and his son paid the two thousand pesos debt owed to the National Bank,(47) and seven days later transferred to the bank’s Tucumán branch, from the Santiago del Estero branch, the five thousand peso mortgage they had obtained in 1884.(48) We do not know why they made these two transactions but we do know that the agricultural adventure did not last much longer. In fact, these are the last known traces of Christiano Junior in Tucumán. Little is known of his life until he reappears in Corrientes in 1899, except that he devoted himself to wines and spirits and appears to have lived in Brazil at some stage.(49) Towards the end of the decade he appeared in the bulletins of the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society as their correspondent in Brazil.

On the fly-leaf of his Practical Treatise the author says it is an expanded and corrected version of a work that came out in the Annals of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry, a national government publication. The volume comprises almost three hundred pages, is illustrated with several engravings and aimed to serve as a safe guide for those who, although they may have raw materials in abundance in their country houses, farms or ranches, let it go to waste because they do not know how to use it, and since these establishments are in the main a long way from urban centres with doctors, medicine and many of the things lacking in the countryside, I have decided to add to my book, under the heading Miscellaneous, a series of useful hints, advice, recommendations, prescriptions about matters of concern to rural landowners (p.11). The book seems to have consumed all Christiano’s energies in the last years of his life. Eduardo Holmberg wrote in the Prologue: it is a serious book, written with knowledge of the subject and love for his fellow man (p.VI).

Towards the end of 1900, an article in a Corrientes newspaper informed its readers that Christiano would be settling there.(50) In the March and April of 1901 he placed advertisements announcing his imminent arrival and from Buenos Aires organised an exhibition of coloured portraits. Another article said that the photographer, after several quiet years, seems to have taken on a new lease of life and is determined to tour the main towns of the province of Corrientes in pursuit of his art, beginning in the capital.(51) The tour did not take place, but he settled in Corrientes in May 1901, not as a photographer, but as a portrait lighter and representative of the Freitas y Castillo studio in Buenos Aires, one of the owners of which was his son José Virginio. He also offered lessons in photographic lighting. No sooner had he arrived than he began lobbying the government for tax concessions for wine, spirits and jam production. He was unsuccessful and this lead to a war of words between La Provincia, opponent of the government and supporter of the project, and La Libertad, defender of officialdom and critic of the initiative. During his stay of about a year in Corrientes, Christiano published a series of eight articles in La Provincia, some of which appeared on the front page.(52) These articles, nearly all of them reminiscences, make up the testimony to his life we mentioned at the beginning and are an excellent source of information about their author. The longest, and perhaps the most interesting, is Tempora Mutantur (Buenos Aires in 1866 and 1900), which recalls the city almost forty years earlier and compares it with the end of the century’s modern Europeanised capital. Around the middle of 1902 he went to Asunción. On 27 October he wrote from there to his grandson Augusto Freitas, in a firm hand, making no mention of any problems with his health. He signed off with fond memories, longing to see you all. He died in Asunción at the end of November or beginning of December. His family later brought his remains to Buenos Aires and buried him in Olivos cemetery. Mr Junior was a real worker, honourable and cultivated, said an obituary published in Corrientes. He had lost his money in business ventures of various kinds but he did not let these mishaps discourage him; he tried by all manner of persistent and laudable efforts to get back on his feet. He dreamed of prosperity for this land and never doubted it would have a golden future.(53)

The photographs in this book can be divided into two groups: those of the city and province of Buenos Aires, dated before 1878; and those from the West and Northwest of Argentina, taken between 1879 and 1883, during his artistic voyage. The photos of Buenos Aires, city and province, were chosen from the negatives in the Witcomb Collection of the National Archives; this includes Christiano Junior’s archive, since he sold his studio to Witcomb & Mackern in 1878. It contains not only the photos he took for his albums Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic, many of which he never published, but also photos he was commissioned to take of businesses, factories, suburban houses, family portraits at home, bridges and installations of the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway and the Buenos Aires and Ensenada Port Railway, among others. The material is very familiar to users of the Archives, but since the photographer is not identified, they are usually mistakenly attributed to the Witcomb Gallery. This error is also due to the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century Witcomb printed its own photographs together with photos it had bought from different sources, including Christiano, in thirteen historic albums of Buenos Aires, in which authorship of the shots is not indicated either. This failure to identify authorship meant that the images were generically attributed to Witcomb. All these photos have been available for consultation at the Archives since 1960, when it bought the Witcomb photographic collection. The only photos of the city and province of Buenos Aires historically identified as Christiano Junior’s were the twenty-four he published in his 1876 and 1877 albums.

The photos that Christiano published in his albums bear (in regular script) the titles he gave them; those that he did not publish bear descriptive titles (in italics). Except for the former group, authorship of which is undisputed, the others all carry the hypothetical attributed, even when the particular attribution is highly probable. Dating the photos was done in a similar fashion: the photos published in albums bear the albums date; the unpublished photos are given an approximate date, always accompanied by the hypothetical circa. The size he used in his albums was also used for the final framing of the unpublished photos.

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References

(1) Christiano Junior, ‘A Few Words to my Audience’, introduction to the album Scenes of the Province of Buenos Aires, the author’s edition, 1876. [Book and article titles are quoted in their original language in the main text and translated in this section for the benefit of the reader.]

(2) Among others, B Kossoy, Origins and Development of Photography in Brazil. 19th Century, Rio de Janeiro, Funarte, 1980; also PC de Azevedo and M Lissovsky, The Photographer Christiano Jr, São Paulo, Ex Libris Ltda, 1988. Also see JM Ferreira de Andrade, ‘The Emperor’s Collection. Brazilian and Foreign Photography from the 19th Century’, catalogue of the exhibition of the same name held at the National Fine Arts Museum, Buenos Aires, 1997.

(3) His first studio was at 57B Ajuda Street. With Miranda he set up as Commercial Photography, 69 São Pedro Street.

(4) He presented the work in 1877 at the Buenos Aires Industrial Club’s first exhibition. He wrote in the catalogue that according to doctors from both Brazil and abroad, no photographer had done realistic work of this kind prior to that date [1866].

(5) PC Azevedo and M Lissovsky, op. cit., p.27.

(6) In a book published in 1899, he wrote: In 1863, while in Rio de Janeiro trying to cure a herpes lesion on the leg, I got an inflammation of the stomach and the tongue, followed by a dyspepsia which I have to this day. […] I suffered from it until 1866 when my doctor advised me to come to Buenos Aires, where the illness continued but less seriously. Christiano Junior, Practical Treatise on Wine Production and Distilling Spirits, Buenos Aires, author’s edition, G Kraft Publishing, p.224.

(7) La Tribuna of 20/10/1867 reported that an important photographer who had recently arrived from Rio de Janeiro and opened a big studio at 159 Florida Street invited the public to an exhibition of his work. On 1/12/1867 the same newspaper announced the inauguration of the studio.

(8) These were his two sons; José Antonio Silva, a twenty one-year old Portuguese photographer who later set up his own business in Paraná; César Mafsot, a thirty five-year old French painter; Aluizio Acciaioly, a forty two-year old Portuguese employee; and two servants, Martín Sarrasqueta, a forty five-year old Spaniard, and Donato Pizarro, an eleven-year old from Córdoba. The presence of a painter suggests a lot of photo-painting was done.

(9) In our premises at Artes Street we have instant cameras that allow us to take portraits of naughty and fidgety children, claimed an advertisement in La Prensa of 4/2/1875.

(10) La Prensa, 9/3/1875.

(11) My father has sold […] his photographic studio at 208 Florida, which I managed for the past six years […] and I am now running the one at 296 Victoria, of which I am sole owner and where I have recently made considerable improvements. Announcement signed by José V Freitas in La Prensa, 15/5/1878.

(12) The phototype, also called collotype, is a printing process, patented in France in 1865 and Germany in 1868, which is based on a metal or glass plate with a gel sensitised by chrome salts. It exposes and develops like a photograph, is then dried, inked and used for printing, with a result similar to a lithograph, giving a good likeness, but it is a slow and limited process in that it can only produce about a thousand copies. The technique was very widespread between 1880 and 1914 but then fell into disuse, only to be revived again recently.

(13) He appears as Member 517, living at 291 Victoria Street, in the August 1875 Anales. In the August 1876 edition, he published an article on the tuber Caladium esculentun, which he wanted to grow on islands in the Paraná, for its alimentary properties both for people and animals. In the Azores—he wrote—this plant is known by the name Inhame, mainly on the island of Flores, where it is highly valued, and almost a necessity among the poor, who use it like bread.

(14) Anales, 30/9/1876. Cf. A Alexander, ‘Christiano Junior, pioneer photographer of the Sociedad Rural Argentina’, in the magazine Tales of the City, III, 11, September 2001.

(15) La Prensa, 8/1/1876.

(16) La Prensa, 4/2/1875.

(17) Cf. Buenos Aires City and Countryside 1860-1870, Photographs by Esteban Gonnet, Benito Panunzi and others, Buenos Aires, Fundación Antorchas Editions, 2000. Without naming them specifically, Christiano criticised these photographers in the introduction to his first album for only showing country scenes of rustic life [and leaving out] the unequivocal signs of progress raising their arrogant cupolas in the centre of the cities.

(18) La Prensa, 15/4/1878.

(19) El Mosquito, 12/1/1879.

(20) Printing and lithography by Le Courrier de la Plata, 64 pages, Buenos Aires, 1876.

(21) From various copies owned by collectors we deduce they were dedicated to Juan Felipe Ibarra, Mariano Moreno, Rudecindo Alvarado, Martín Rodríguez, Vicente López y Planes, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón and José Mármol. They were printed at M Biedma, 135 Belgrano Street, Buenos Aires.

(22) Subscription form for Scenes and Customs of the Argentine Republic album, 1882.

(23) He saw clients at 134 Libertad Street, in a studio that had belonged, or still did, to Alejandro Witcomb. El Independiente, 4/6/1879. His arrival and departure from each city are calculated from the newspaper advertisements.

(24) El Eco de Córdoba, 27/8/1879 and 31/10/1879. He worked in Jonás Castro’s Córdoba Photography at nº43, 9 de Julio Street.

(25) C Mayol Laferrère, Precursors of Photography in Río Cuarto 1862-1932, Río Cuarto, Fundación Mayol Laferrère, 2001, p.6. The author assumes that, in Córdoba, he planned his trip to Cuyo with the help of the incipient rail services. The Central Argentine Railway took him to Villa María. There he boarded the Andean Railway that terminated in the city of San Luis, from where he would have continued on to Mendoza by carriage.

(26) El Constitucional, 13/7/1880 and 20/12/1880. His studio was in José Maria Videla’s house, San Nicolás Street. The assistant who had accompanied him from Buenos Aires, Benito P Cerruti, left him soon after their arrival to go into business with a local photographer. Cf. A Alexander, ‘The Great Photographer Christiano Junior in Mendoza’, Report of the Second Congress of the History of Photography, Buenos Aires, 1994, pp.41-48.

(27) La Unión, 3/10/1880, and El Constitucional, 15/12/1880.

(28) ‘In the Andes’, La Provincia, Corrientes, 1/3/1902.

(29) El Oasis, 23/10/1881.

(30) El Oasis, 15/1/1882.

(31) A J Cunietti Ferrando, ‘Photographers in the 1882 Continental Exhibition’, Report of the Fourth Congress of the History of Photography in Argentina, Buenos Aires, 1995, p.104.

(32) F Latzina, Argentine Geographic Dictionary, 2nd ed., Buenos Aires, Ramón Espasa & Cía, 1891. This information was provided by Alfredo Franco, to whom we are indebted.

(33) La Reforma, 28/2/1883.

(34) José Virginio Freitas Henriques was no stranger to the Northwest. In 1879 he had got married in Catamarca to Emilia María Xavier. In 1885 he worked in Catamarca and Santiago del Estero under various business names: Christiano Junior Jr., Christiano Junior Jr. & Co., Junior Photography - Freitas Henriques and José V Freitas.

(35) The peso fuerte was used as unit of account until 1881, when the gold moneda nacional peso replaced it. The peso fuerte’s value was equal to that of the old Spanish peso, that is, 1/17 ounces of gold. In 1880, the Argentine national budget was roughly 20 million $F. For more information, see Roberto Cortés Conde, Debt, money and crisis. Fiscal and monetary evolution in Argentina 1862-1890, Buenos Aires, Sudamericana-Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, 1989.

(36) The documents can be seen in the Tucumán Historical Archives (pp.101-107, 1882) where copies of the requests made to the other provinces are also kept. This information, as well as additional information about Christiano’s activities in Tucumán, was provided by Alfredo Franco, to whom we are indebted.

(37) The Municipality has received 500 panoramic views taken in different provinces of the Republic by the photographer Christiano Junior, which the Municipality had previously agreed to buy at the price of one peso fuerte per scene. Five hundred, therefore, cost FIVE HUNDRED PESOS FUERTES. What a lot of money they had to spend! Commentary published in El Orden, 26/12/1883.

(38) The papers are in the Tucumán Historical Archives, protocol book nº13, series C, p.260V, letter J, 1883. It cost five thousand Bolivian pesos. The front measured three and a half blocks and it went back three quarters of a league.

(39) Our partner Mr Lecoq, having left the business he had for a year in this square, will now continue the business he ran so successfully in Buenos Aires, in El Orden, Tucumán, 2/4/1884.

(40) Tucumán Historical Archives, protocol book nº16, t.II, series C, p.535V, 1884.

(41) El Orden, 4/8/1885.

(42) El Orden, 24/12/1884.

(43) Op. cit., note 6.

(44) Op. cit., note 13.

(45) Tucumán Historical Archives, protocol book, series B, V.10, p.110V, 1886.

(46) El Orden, 29/11/1886.

(47) Tucumán Historical Archives, protocol book, series C, letters H to M, p.535V, 1886 to 1889.

(48) Tucumán Historical Archives, protocol book, series C, letters H to M, p.173, 1886 to 1889.

(49) In his book we read: Finding myself in the state of Rio, Brazil, in 1893, I put two barrels of orange wine in the sun for several months… (p.76). In January of 1897, when I was in Mendoza, I bought a two-year-old barrel of white wine… (p.76). Despite the fact that my only good results have been in Brazil with orange wine and white wine in Mendoza… (p.78). Among the peasants who worked [in Brazil] in a wine, spirits and liqueurs factory… (p.264).

(50) La Provincia, 16/10/1900, quoted by M D Fernández, ‘Christiano Junior, one of the great pioneers of Argentine photography, spent his last years in Corrientes’. Annals of the Province of Corrientes Historical Commission, 3, 2001.

(51) La Provincia, 1/3/1901.

(52) Strange Dreams, 14/12/1901; Memories of My Land, dedicated to his grandson Augusto, 1/1/1902; Tempora Mutantur (Buenos Aires in 1866 and 1900), dedicated to his granddaughter Telma, 15, 18, 21, 25/1/1902; Carnival in my Land, dedicated to Pedro Benjamín Serrano, 8/2/1902; In the Andes, dedicated to Félix M Gómez, 1/3/1902; Unreliability and Lies, dedicated to Manuel V Figuerero, 26/3/1902; Brazil from 1855 to 1870, dedicated to Guillermo Rojas, 5/4/1902, and From Corrientes, 17/5/1902. These articles provide the best source of information about Christiano’s life in Corrientes. We thank Marcelo Daniel Fernández and Luis Gurdiel for making them available.

(53) La Provincia, 3/12/1902.


(This text was published in the book Un país en transición (1867-1883) Christiano Junior by ALEXANDER, Abel, Beatriz BRAGONI y Luis PRIAMO)