Two pioneers of documentary photography

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

As far as we know, the Frenchman Esteban Gonnet and the Italian Benito Panunzi were the first to publish photographic albums with images of the city of Buenos Aires and the countryside in the province of Buenos Aires—and they were the only ones to do it in the 1860s. Editing an album involved going through a systematic process of selecting and organising subjects in terms of their importance, that is, it required more than a passing interest or curiosity. Therefore, we can claim that Gonnet and Panunzi were the pioneers of documentary photography of urban life and country customs in this region of Argentina.¹

Gonnet’s first albums, entitled Recuerdos de Buenos Aires (Memories of Buenos Aires), were published in 1864. The Álbum Panunzi came out in 1868. Daguerreotypes aside, we know of three photographers who took photos in Buenos Aires prior to these dates: Edmond Lebeaud, a French painter who arrived in 1837 and made the oldest known albumen photo of the city; Adolfo Alexander, who settled in Buenos Aires in 1860; and Rafael Castro y Ordóñez, a Spaniard who took some shots at the beginning of 1863, when he called at the River Plate as photographer on a scientific expedition sent by the Spanish Crown to the South Pacific. Also prior to Gonnet and Panunzi are a few unattributed photos and six ambrotypes said to have been taken by an Englishman, George Corbett, around 1860 on the Los Ingleses cattle farm in Tuyú. Over and above any aesthetic value they may have, this body of early work is of considerable iconographic importance. That is the reason for including all of them in this book, although the subject matter and even the perspectives and camera angles of several are the same.

The small number of photographs contemporary to those of Gonnet and Panunzi remain anonymous so far, although we know the names of a couple of other photographers from that time, such as the surveyor Jaime Arrufó, probably an amateur, whose participation in the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867 was recorded as: Jaime Arrufó, from Buenos Aires. Collection of photographs taken in the city and province of Buenos Aires. Various scenes.² Also there was the above mentioned Alexander, who installed himself, according to his advertisements, in Victoria Street in front of the Cabildo patio. He had worked in Chile before coming over to Mendoza and brought with him pictures he offered for sale in Buenos Aires newspapers. We know of one view of Buenos Aires taken by him, which makes us think he took others, now lost. A news item in the press under the headline Photographic Scenes said Mr Alexander has taken a selection of scenes of the Northern Railway, from 25 de Mayo station to Olivos. These scenes were paid for by the railway company and sent to England³ These would be the first railway photos taken in Argentina.

To date, all photography from the 1860s showing Buenos Aires, gauchos or Indians has been attributed to Panunzi. This was because the only known signed photos are his. However, the writers of this paper found evidence that Gonnet took the majority of the unsigned photos attributed to the Italian. Moreover, he preceded him in the task of documenting the city and, almost certainly, gaucho customs.

Esteban Gonnet (1830 - 1868)

In October 1864, the Buenos Aires newspaper La Tribuna4 carried a news item entitled Memories of Buenos Aires:

We know of several albums called Recuerdos de Buenos Aires or Recuerdos de la campaña de Buenos Aires (Memories of the Buenos Aires Countryside). As well as views of the city, they include photos of gauchos and Indians. None has the name of the photographer on the front cover or on the photos, but on the first or last page they have a small stamp with the words Fotografía de Mayo, 25 de Mayo 25, Buenos Aires, written round a rising sun. A discreet sticker with the same inscription was also stuck to the back of photos of Buenos Aires mounted on passepartout. The same reference appears printed on the back of carte de visite portraits taken by the firm, although in some cases it just says 25-25 on the front, under the photo and written by hand. Were it not for the article in La Tribuna, there would be no way of knowing that Gonnet was the author of those albums, since he did not advertise them and nowhere was he recorded as the owner of Fotografía de Mayo. The only person known to have run that shop in the 1860s is Hipólito Galliard, another Frenchman, a friend and perhaps a partner of Gonnet’s.⁵

A document from the Buenos Aires Law Courts revealed Gonnet’s first name and profession. It refers to an action brought by Galliard as executor of Don Esteban Gonnet’s will and proxy for his widow, Henriqueta de Gonnet, claiming payment for surveying a piece of land in Exaltación de la Cruz, by the public surveyor Esteban Gonnet.⁶ Pillado’s Dictionary lists Galliard as a portraitist and Gonnet as a surveyor,⁷ both with professional premises at 25, 25 de Mayo Street, where, according to the record books at the Recoleta cemetery, the latter also had his private address. These books record the death, at thirty-eight years of age, in March of 1868, of Estevan Gonnet, French national, domiciled at 25 Mayo.⁸

We do not know the date and circumstances of Gonnet’s arrival in Argentina. Nor do we know the town he was from, how he became a photographer, when he began sharing the studio with Galliard⁹ nor how long Galliard kept it open after Gonnet’s death. Judging from an advertisement in February 1865, the studio was quite active.¹⁰ Gonnet’s other profession, as a surveyor, however, is better documented. He sat his state licensing exam on 23 November 1858 and received his surveyor’s diploma in Buenos Aires on 12 January 1859. After that he worked without interruption until his death, in the districts of Alberti, Brandsen, Carmen de Areco, Campana, Chacabuco, Chascomús, General Rodríguez, General San Martín, General Sarmiento, La Matanza, La Plata, Lobos, Luján, Magdalena, Marcos Paz, Mercedes, Merlo, Monte, Navarro, Pilar, Roque Pérez, Saladillo, Salto, San Andrés de Giles, San Fernando, San Vicente, Tigre (including the second area of islands), Tordillo and 25 de Mayo. In 1860 he prepared the plan and plotted the streets of the town of 25 de Mayo.¹¹ Some surveyors used photographs to help them in their work and several, like Gonnet, are part of local photographic history. Among them are three whom Pillado includes in his Dictionary: Carlos Encina, Germán Kuhr and the above mentioned Arrufó.¹² On 9 April 1869, shortly after Gonnet’s death, Galliard received his own surveyor’s diploma and worked in the profession until 1878.¹³

The oldest preserved views of Buenos Aires date from between 1850 and 1855. They are nine daguerreotypes now in the National History Museum.¹⁴ Four were shot by the North American Charles DeForest Fredricks. The authors of the other five are unknown. Apart from the one made by Lebeaud, we know of very few images of the city printed on albumen paper (the new technique of the day) prior to those taken by Gonnet, whose albums with photos of Buenos Aires printed with this system and disseminated after 1864 were, to our knowledge, the first. Given that photos and albums of scenes and customs were relatively frequent in those years, not only in Europe and the United States but also in Brazil, Gonnet could have modelled his album on any of them. Single photos which often turn up in collectors’ hands show that he also sold photos individually.

Gonnet photographed two urban landscapes previously drawn by artists like Vidal and Pellegrini, and reproduced as lithographs by engravers like Bacle. One was the riverside near the Fort. The other, the adjacent squares of Victoria and 25 de Mayo, separated by the old arcade or Recova. His albums were iconographic testimonies to the incorporation of Argentine society into the modern industrial world, although we do not know whether he purposely set out to contrast the old and the new. His photos of colonial bullock carts in Constitución market, a steam train with carriages in the Plaza del Parque or the Northern Railway station and the gas-works in Retiro show that he was aware of the great revolution going on around him, of which photography was both a part and a witness. Like Panunzi, Gonnet was not interested in local Buenos Aires figures, the kind drawn, among others, by D’Hastrel. Photography would not focus on street characters until a decade later, in the 1870s, with the work of Christiano Junior.

Gonnet’s photos were the first to be used in Buenos Aires to make lithographs for newspaper illustrations. The Correo del Domingo of 30 October 1864 published an engraving of the Plaza de la Victoria and the old Recova by Enrique Meyer, taken from one of the photos advertised in La Tribuna four days earlier, although it did not mention the photographic origin of the image, something no European and North American printer would have failed to do in those days. But the omission did not appear to have bothered the photographer, since on 27 November the same newspaper printed another of his photos, a view of the Plaza de la Victoria with the Pyramid and Cathedral. Meyer did engravings from Panunzi’s photos which appeared in the newspaper El Americano, published in Paris in Spanish between 1872 and 1874, also failing to mention their photographic origin.¹⁵

Gonnet became familiar with country folk when he was a surveyor on estancias in the province of Buenos Aires, since he shared the daily life of the peasants. He was the first to systematically photograph scenes of cattle branding, slaughtering, drinking mate, cook-outs, games of taba (knucklebone or jackstones) and round-ups, subjects which typified the gaucho genre later cultivated by Francisco Ayerza and Leonardo Pereyra.¹⁶ He also did portraits of Indians, which suggests that an advertisement published in December of 1866 referred to photos of his, although it wasn’t from the Fotografía de Mayo.¹⁷

In this kind of shots, Gonnet endeavoured to faithfully capture the features and customs of his models. When he focused on activities like a game of taba, or took shots of gauchos slaughtering cattle or eating, he froze the action at its most illustrative point and tried to get the models to show clearly what they were doing. Photographic conventions of the genre depicting local customs, of European origin, required that the visual language be as didactic as possible, since it was assumed that the viewer would be unfamiliar with the culture of those being photographed.¹⁸ In the photo entitled Gauchos—the composition of which is similar to another of Panunzi’s well-known shots, Country Folk—the man beside the door has somewhat incongruously a knife in his hand, which suggests that the photographer wanted to show him holding the famous weapon of criollo duels. Nevertheless, the photo has an air of spontaneity which is unusual in this type of composition, because of the casual postures of the subjects, three of whom, on both sides, came out slightly blurred and two ended up cut off by the frame. While Panunzi’s scenes of Buenos Aires are better than Gonnet’s, this superiority is not apparent in the portraits and groups of gauchos and Indians; in these, perhaps, the latter may be considered more skilful.

José María Paladino Giménez¹⁹ published numerous photos of Gonnet’s with peasants and Indians and attributed them to Panunzi. Of the extraordinary body of images he collected, only one bore the photographer’s signature on the card: the above mentioned Country Folk. On the basis of this one piece, he credited Panunzi with all the others, many of which were stamped Fotografía de Mayo. This is also the reason why it is assumed he was the owner of the studio. Thus was born a mistaken assumption which has continued to this day and has been spread by various authors, including Erika Billeter’s 1985 grand exhibition Fotografie Lateinamerikas von 1860 bis heute (Latin American photography from 1860 to the present), which toured several European countries. Benito Panunzi’s name became famous outside Argentina and his photos of gauchos and Indians (which in some case turned out not to be his) earned him notoriety and commanded high prices on the international markets.

Two photographs which were always attributed to Panunzi were Indians of Patagonia and the portrait of the Tehuelche chief Casimiro Biguá. We now know that the first is by Gonnet and we assume the same of the second, but we are not sure. These are remarkable images, as much for the rigour of the arrangement as for the particular expressiveness of the subjects. The portrait of Biguá had no means of identifying the author;²⁰ it was taken with another in which the chief poses with his son Sam Slick, when both Indians travelled to Buenos Aires in 1864 on board the Espora, the ship of Commander Luis Piedra Buena. We know of a reproduction of this image in photogravure by Lemercier Lithographe, rue de Seine, à Paris, published in France in 1875.²¹ One can see that the chief’s pose is almost identical in the two photos; in fact, the one which shows him in the foreground could be an enlarged fragment of the other one, a sign that both were taken at the same sitting. According to Bermondy, Lemercier’s engraving was based on a photo given by Vicente Fidel López to notre collègue M. Maspero, professeur d’archéologie égyptienne au Collège de France (our colleague M. Maspero, professor of Egyptian archaeology at the Collège de France). The author of the French article attributes the shot to un excellent artiste, M. Mayo, a conclusion he no doubt reached when he saw the logo Fotografía de Mayo, as the anthropologist Vignatti points out.²²

Indians of Patagonia was taken between 1866 and 1867, probably in the studio at 25, 25 de Mayo Street, during a visit the Indians made to Buenos Aires. It appears in an album entitled Recuerdos de la campaña de Buenos Aires, the first page of which bears the hand-written inscription from R Reid MD, British Hospital, Buenos Aires, 1867 (which establishes the date). We do not know the names of the individuals in the portrait, despite the fact that they appear in two other photos. A copy of the first of these belonged to Estanislao Zeballos, who wrote the numbers 1 and 2 on it and scribbled on the cardboard surround: (1) Colonel Chief Huenchuquir, the Irigoyen of the Pampas, Ambassador to Urquiza (1859) and other governments. This mission was in Buenos Aires in 1870, led by (2) Captain Solano, spokesman, and staying at the Hotel de España, Piedras Street.²³ If the date Zeballos mentions did not contradict the one established for Indians of Patagonia, this photo could be attributed to Gonnet (like the other one). The Indians’ appearance in all three photos suggests they were taken on the same occasion. It is also unlikely that the group went to more than one photographic studio during their visit to the capital. Recent literature supports the assumption that they belonged to Calfucurá’s tribe.²⁴

Benito Panunzi (1819 - 1894)

The only thing we know for sure about Benito Panunzi before he arrived in Argentina is that he was born in Italy. There are reasons to believe that 1818 or 1819 was the year of his birth, but it is not known where he came into the world. Neither do we know where nor from whom he learned the art of photography. Equally mysterious is where he acquired the other professional skills he demonstrated during his life in America, in particular drawing, painting, architecture or engineering.²⁵ His name does not appear in any history of Italian photography, despite the fact that his work—judging by what he produced in Argentina—was of high quality, both technically (his albumen copies have lasted extraordinarily well) and visually. The first real information about his photographic work in Buenos Aires is from 1868.²⁶ We could find no documents establishing the moment he arrived in Argentina, which must have been some time before that, since he may not have started taking photos as soon as he got off the boat. While it is not impossible that he learned photography after he arrived, it is more likely that he came to Buenos Aires with this skill.

The first national census, in 1869, registers a Panunzi Benito, age 50, sex male, civil status bachelor, nationality Italian, profession photographer at 55 Cuyo Street (now Sarmiento), Buenos Aires. It recorded another photographer in the same house: Luis Zoccola, Italian, bachelor, age 25, possibly a colleague of the former.²⁷ Since there were two dwellings in 55 Cuyo, a hotel and a wooden construction (perhaps the gallery for posing), it is not far-fetched to think that Panunzi lived there, as well as it being his photographic studio. The business was called Fotografía Artística. A map of Buenos Aires in 1870²⁸ shows Rushton and Trillia’s Imprenta Inglesa (English Printers) at 55/57 Cuyo, which suggests that Panunzi had by then given up or moved his studio. After that date, there is no evidence that he continued working as a photographer.

Unlike almost all the photographers in his time, Panunzi did not advertise his activities in the newspapers, which means we cannot put a date on the start of his professional life. The above mentioned newspaper reference of El Nacional of April 1868 is not an advertisement but a news story: Álbum Panunzi. The seventh issue of this interesting photographic publication has come out. The two photos in it are the Artillery Square and Country Folk. Both scenes are very impressive. The photographer’s name was not listed in the business registers of the time. We only know of two portraits—in carte de visite format—which have on the back: Benito Panunzi. Fotografía Artística. 55 Cuyo. Buenos Aires. The rest only carry the business reference. It is a strange behaviour, especially in a competitive photographic market in which practitioners fought hard to get and keep clients. Perhaps Panunzi, whose main training seems to have been in the fine arts and architecture, did not hold photography in great esteem. Nevertheless, in times of hardship and to make ends meet, he might have entered the business and stayed in it until he made headway in activities he found more interesting and with which he wanted to be identified.

That news item in El Nacional shows that Panunzi sold his collection of scenes and customs by the issue. Buyers could either stick the photos in an album, keep them loose in a folder (a portfolio, as it was described in English) or have them framed to hang on the wall. In the issue mentioned in the newspaper, Panunzi offered a photo of Buenos Aires and another of gauchos, perhaps in order to sell both to customers only interested in one of the subjects. He sold the photographs mounted on a passepartout, normally with his signature under the image on the right hand side and the title printed in large letters.²⁹ To give them a more artistic finish, both the photos and the title had a light brown box round them, the albumen prints usually had a blurred semicircular lower half or an oval vignette and, as a rule, had been toned down (that is, treated with metallic salts to obtain a softer colour and greater durability). If Panunzi was already selling the seventh issue of his photos in April 1868, it is reasonable to suppose that he had begun taking the pictures the year before or in 1866.

We did not know of a 19th-century photographer who sold photos of scenes and customs in this way. However, Panunzi had one immediate precedent that he no doubt considered prestigious: the paintings and drawings of local customs by León Pallière, which, turned into lithographs, were sold by the issue under the title of Álbum Pallière. Beginning in March 1864, the latter offered first two, and then four, items per month until, by February 1865, all fifty-two of his scenes had been printed. Three years later, Panunzi sold his photos following exactly this model. He gave his collection of photographs the same name: Álbum Panunzi, he sold it by the issue and distributed it in envelopes similar to the folders Pallière had used. In addition, one of his photos reproduced Pallière’s work The Stockyard,³⁰ which, in a somewhat different version but with the same title, was in Pallière’s album. This supports the assumption that they might have had a personal relationship,³¹ reinforced by the fact that Pallière also seems to have taken photographs. Before going on a trip to Europe in 1861, he auctioned various oils and water colours, and also some very commendable engravings, sketches, and one complete camera.³² Both sold their albums in Fusoni Hermanos & Maveroff, a large ironmonger’s and naval store where many of Buenos Aires artists exhibited their work.

This book includes three unsigned photographs belonging to collectors, with captions written in a picturesque mixture of Italian and Spanish: Famiglia del cachique Coliqueo (indos mansos) (Chief Coliqueo’s family, docile Indians), Indios patagones (del vero) (Patagonian Indians, from real life), and Gauchos (costumi del campo) (Gauchos, country customs). They are part of an album of fifteen photos entitled Vedute di Buenos Aires (Views of Buenos Aires), which has nothing to indicate who the author was but which has always been considered to be Panunzi’s work.³³ We know that twelve of these photos were in fact taken by Panunzi (because they are signed by him in other albums and portfolios), but since there are no known signed examples of the other three, we cannot attribute them to him with certainty.

As far as the photo Patagonian Indians (from real life) is concerned, not only is the unsubstantiated attribution to Panunzi common, but so is the dubious identification of the first two characters on the left as Sam Slick and Casimiro Biguá, and of the fifth as Chief Orkeke, who died in prison in Buenos Aires in 1882. In August or September 1867, Lewis Jones, a Welsh settler from Chubut, was photographed with this same group in Buenos Aires, when he came with the Indians to the capital to negotiate with the national government. The two portraits were probably taken at the same time.³⁴

It is also doubtful whether Panunzi published the album Views of Buenos Aires, because of its small size, rough covers, poor cardboard, fragile and bent, and the inferior quality of the photos themselves and the way they are presented, without vignettes, blurred edges, rounded corners or ornamental boxes. In addition, the captions were not printed but written in a hand which, according to experts,³⁵ was not his. None of this is consistent with the refined presentation of his Álbum and his later activities as an architect, draughtsman and teacher at the Sociedad Estímulo de Bellas Artes (Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts). Given that Panunzi had stopped taking photographs for a living by 1870, he might have sold his business, including his archive of negatives. The new owner might have made additional copies and sold them without the photographer’s signature, hastily put together in bad conditions and even mixed with other people’s photos.³⁶

A curious photo of Panunzi’s accompanies an article in the magazine Caras y Caretas.³⁷ It shows an imperial crown which, according to the journalist, was made of solid gold, weighed about five kilos and had been ordered in Paris by the Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López. It was part of a delivery of luxury furniture which happened to be in the port of Buenos Aires, on its way to Asunción, when the War of the Triple Alliance broke out. It was confiscated by the Argentine government and when Sarmiento became president in 1868, it ended up in his office. It is possible that on this occasion the government commissioned the photo of the crown, which had disappeared from Presidential Palace by 1902. Not surprising if you think how many people go in and out of this building and how little time gold notoriously lasts there, wrote the journalist. He added: The photo of this crown is the only one left in the archives and was taken by the photographer Benito Panunzi, who had his studio at No. 55 Cuyo Street. This suggests that by 1868 Panunzi was well thought of professionally and had access to the corridors of power.

Panunzi took very few shots of gaucho themes, perhaps because Gonnet had already dealt amply with the genre, knowledgeably and skilfully. Be that as it may, it was too important a subject to omit from a collection of native scenes and customs. We know of five photos of gauchos with his signature, of which the most interesting are Country Folk and A Frontier Bar. The former demonstrates an expert hand in the composition and preparation of group photos. It was taken in front of what seems to be a farm kitchen (in Exaltación de la Cruz, according to Paladino Giménez, because of the presence of a pair of Irish sheep farmers in the foreground next to the local country folk, that is, the first on the right and one in the middle). The scene, carefully prepared, emphasises features typical of a country gathering: the gauchos milling round the barbecue, passing the mate around and playing the guitar. But the unlit fire, paucity of firewood and meagre amount of meat are eloquent proof that the photo had been stage managed. The pot of mate herbs, very visible next to the firewood, and the riding whips the gauchos are holding, show that the photographer wants the camera to record objects typical of gaucho folklore. The people, cleverly arranged along the whole width of the cadre, look spontaneous and natural, with the exception of the gaucho on the right, who seems to be posing according to the photographer’s instructions. The distance between the figures and the camera is just right and the composition is balanced and precise.

A Frontier Bar seems less studied than the others and closer to a modern snapshot. The shack and the surroundings are as important as the people. Panunzi wanted the shot to include the trench in the foreground, which would have more impact were it not for the blurred vignette which was added to the copy. It is not certain where the shot was taken, although the trench suggests that it is a frontier area subject to Indian raids. The man nearest the camera, obviously posing, looks like an English cattle farmer, as Paladino Giménez suggests. On the floor is a ‘tame’ Indian, probably drunk, and only just visible in the shadows, leaning on his elbows behind the grill, is the barkeeper. On the bench is a pile of ñandú feathers, which the barefoot gaucho may have come to the bar to sell. No one is looking at the camera, except, perhaps, the hidden barkeeper. The spontaneous tone of the photo makes it hard to imagine the time needed to set up the bulky camera, prepare the damp collodion plate and expose it. More than any other, perhaps, this image conveys the roughness, the solitude and the uncertainty of life on the frontier of the province of Buenos Aires mid-way through the 19th century.

The only photograph with an Indian theme that Panunzi included in his Álbum was Indian Tents on the Pampas. In the mid-1860s the Indian settlements nearest Buenos Aires were the tribes of Ignacio Coliqueo in Los Toldos (a place then called Tapera de Díaz) and of Catriel in Azul. Maybe because of this, the photo was said³⁸ to have been taken on the banks of the Nievas stream, near Azul, although this cannot be deduced from the image, nor can we tell what tribe it is. It is strange that horses but no Indians can be seen, as if the tents had been uninhabited or the Indians had refused to pose. As far as we know, this shot and Chief Coliqueo’s family (docile Indians) are the oldest photographs of Indians in their habitat. According to the Benedictine monk Meinrado Hux, from Abbey in Los Toldos, the latter was taken there, in front of Chief Ignacio Coliqueo’s large hut.

By 1870, Panunzi’s photographic career in Buenos Aires had come to an end, perhaps because he had really come to Argentina to do something else, or perhaps due to the fact that in a small but very competitive market he preferred to leave a profession which meant an unstable, even precarious, life. Panunzi’s change of profession may well have been due to a combination of both reasons, although the former probably held more weight. While in 1869 he had said he was a photographer, in the 1879 Guía general de comercio por orden de profesiones (General Business Guide by Profession) he appears as an engineer (a title which in those days was interchangeable with that of architect), living at 281 Temple Street (now Viamonte). The same information appears in the 1890 Guía postal de la capital (Postal Guide to the Capital), which gives his last address as 1133 Cangallo Street. When he died, the death certificate and notices of death call him an engineer.

The first news we have of Panunzi after he closed his photographic business is related to the arts. The catalogue of a national exhibition held in Córdoba in 1871 shows that he exhibited a black and white portrait, in two pencils, on coloured paper, for which he received an honourable mention.³⁹ It could have been a fotocarbonilla (charcoalphoto), that is, a carbon drawing done over a faintly printed photograph. In those days, the classical techniques of drawing and painting were given higher status than photography, even by the photographers themselves.⁴⁰ It comes as no surprise, therefore, that even though the exhibition had a category for photographs, Panunzi did not send his Álbum, published only three years earlier, which nowadays is considered to be of exceptional quality. Ten years later, he participated in a similar event, the Italian Industrial Exhibition of 1881; he sent a diploma design which also received a medal.⁴¹

In 1879, the Sociedad Estímulo de Bellas Artes appointed Bernabé de María, José María Gutiérrez, Juan Lanusse, Mariano Agrelo and Benito Panunzi to the committee assessing works sent to an exhibition. When the Society’s governing body was elected the following year, Eduardo Sívori, Alfredo París, Agrelo and Panunzi were chosen as board members.⁴² In a document dated 1887, in which the Society supported Sívori when his painting Le lever de la bonne was attacked, Panunzi’s signature is there among the most important painters of the day.⁴³ And Martín Malharro, evoking his time in the Society, recalled two teachers who saw to everything, Don Francisco Romero and Don Antonio Panuncci (sic), the former a painter and the latter an architect, both Italian, serious individuals, frank and straightforward with their pupils, [for whom] we had boundless respect.⁴⁴

We do not know much about Panunzi’s work as an architect or engineer either. There is evidence of his participation in the designing and building of the church of San José de Flores with Emilio Lombardi, between 1879 and 1883, and in a competition to design the headquarters of the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires in La Plata.⁴⁵

Benito Panunzi died on 10 January 1894, of a stroke according to the death certificate, which also states that he was seventy seven years old and was a bachelor, Italian, engineer, domiciled in the house in which he died.⁴⁶ On 11 January 1894notices of death appeared in La Nación, La Patria degli Italiani and La Prensa. Since no mourners were mentioned, it can be presumed that he had no relatives in Buenos Aires.

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References

¹ When this book was going to press, the authors came across an album, done by the British photographer James Niven for his own private use, with more than forty photos of the Buenos Aires region. These were apparently shot around 1863. As far as other regions are concerned, we note that in 1858 and 1859 Adolfo Alexander, a German, took photos in Mendoza; in 1866 George H Alfeld, an Englishman, published excellent albums with views and customs of Rosario, and Pedro Tappa, an Italian, documented building and events in the city of Santa Fe in the same period.

² La República Argentina en la Exposición Universal de 1867 en París, Imprenta del Porvenir, Buenos Aires, 1868, p.159. We thank R Amigo for this information.

³ El Nacional, 4/8/1863. We thank J Waddell for this information.

⁴ 26 October 1864, year XII, number 3235, p.2, col.8, and p.3, col.1.

⁵ El Avisador. Guía general del comercio de Buenos Aires y de forasteros, edited by Wenceslao R Solveyra, Imprenta de Buenos Aires, 1866. It is almost certain that in 1850 the studio at No. 25, 25 de Mayo Street was occupied by the above mentioned Lebeaud, since he put an advertisement in French in La Gaceta Mercantil on 11 May of that year (year 27, number 7944, p.3, col.3) to inform anyone who wanted a daguerreotype portrait that they could go to No. 25, next to the milliners on the corner of 25 de Mayo Street and Piedad Street.

⁶ Archivo General de la Nación, file 6285, 6/11/1868.

⁷ Antonio Pillado, Diccionario de Buenos Aires o guía de forasteros, Imprenta del Porvenir, Buenos Aires, 1864.

⁸ Departamento de Patrimonio Histórico, cementerio de la Recoleta, Libro de defunciones de hombres y mujeres, letter G, p.68, March 1868.

⁹ One way the early photographers paid the rent on their studio was to teach photography to the owner of the property. It may well be that Gonnet, the surveyor, learned the art from the photographer Galliard.

¹⁰ It said: Latest novelty for the 1865 Carnival. Portrait stamps to accompany your Carnival presents. 100 pesos for a hundred portraits, 60 pesos for fifty, from the Fotografía de Mayo, No. 25, 25 de Mayo Street. (La Tribuna, number 3323, year XII, 11/2/1865, p.3, col.5.)

¹¹ Book II of the Actas de los acuerdos del Departamento Topográfico desde octubre de 1857 hasta mayo de 1859, and Book I of the Antecedentes de agrimensores actuantes entre 1820 y 1888, Department of Geodesy, Deeds and Lands, Province of Buenos Aires Ministry of Public Works Archive. We thank H Epifanio, E Marcet, A Cunietti-Ferrando, JC Álvarez Gelves (jnr) and S Bertinat Gonnet for this information.

¹² Encina (1832-1882) photographed the Desert Campaign in 1879. Kuhr founded the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society in 1898 and was its first vice president.

¹³ Libro de agrimensores, Buenos Aires Department of Topography, Province of Buenos Aires Ministry of Public Works Archive. We thank JC Álvarez Gelves (jnr) for this information.

¹⁴ MA Cuarterolo et al., Los años del daguerrotipo. Primeras fotografías argentinas. 1843-1870, Fundación Antorchas, Buenos Aires, 1995.

¹⁵ 21/4/1873 (year II, number 5). The editor of the magazine was Héctor Varela. We thank C Sánchez Idiart for this information.

¹⁶ Founders of the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society, the first photographic club in Argentina. Ayerza wanted to illustrate the Martín Fierro with photographs and publish it in a luxury edition in Paris. Although the project came to nothing, the photos were taken with the help of Leonardo Pereyra on his estancia San Juan. The photos are in the National Fine Arts Academy.

¹⁷ It advertised a wide range of views on the main points of interest and building of this and other cities, and portraits of Indians from many different tribes, singly or in groups, and many other religious and profane photographs. There are cards of all of them, either to put in an album or to send by post. Del Plata bookshop, 28 San Martín Street. El Nacional, year XV, number 6134, 27/12/1866, p.4, col.6.

¹⁸ Cf. Boris Kossoy, ‘La fotografía en Latinoamérica en el siglo XIX. La experiencia europea y la experiencia exótica’, in Wendy Watriss and Lois Parkinson Zamora (eds.), Image and Memory. Photography from Latin America 1866-1994, University of Texas Press, 1998.

¹⁹ El gaucho. Reseña fotográfica 1860-1930, Editorial Palsa, Buenos Aires, 1971.

²⁰ Two originals of this photo are known. One belonged to Haskel Hoffenberg and, according to him, has no indication of authorship. The other original, which is published in this book, is in the Maguire Collection and could not be seen. It has been reproduced from a copy provided by HK Cordon Larios, whom we thank, taken from CM Gelly y Obes, Ocupación de la llanura pampeana, MCBA, Buenos Aires, 1979, p.106.

²¹ Théophile Bermondy, ‘Les patagons, les fuégiens et les araucans’, Archives de la Société Américaine de France, 1875, quoted in Milcíades Vignatti, ‘Casimiro y su hijo Sam Slick’, Revista del museo de La Plata, new series, number 2, pp.225-237, 13/1/1945. We thank E Perea for this information.

²² Vignatti, op. cit.

²³ Zeballos compares Huenchuquir to Bernardo de Irigoyen, a politician famous for his diplomatic skills. The photograph was also published in CM Gelly y Obes, op. cit., 1979, p.94, and is reproduced here from a copy provided by HK Cordon Larios.

²⁴ In Abelardo Levaggi, Paz en la frontera. Historia de las relaciones diplomáticas con las comunidades indígenas en la Argentina (Siglos XVI-XIX), Universidad del Museo Social Argentino, Buenos Aires, 2000, p.352, we read: In mid-1858 Indian Captain Huenchuquir arrived in Azul with a delegation of nine Indians, sent by Calfucurá, to sue for peace.

²⁵ Vicente Gesualdo wrote several articles about Panunzi, which were important to find the original albums (‘Benito Panunzi, patriota garibaldino, pintor, arquitecto y fotógrafo en China y las pampas argentinas’, Proceedings of the First Argentine Congress on the History of Photography, Buenos Aires, 1992; ‘Benito Panunzi, fotógrafo de indios y gauchos’, The Photographist, Journal of the Western Photographic Collectors Association, 88,1991, and ‘Los que fijaron la imagen del país’, Todo es historia, 195, November ). Gesualdo maintained that Panunzi came from Amelia, in Umbria, but a careful search of parochial and municipal archives in that town and surrounding localities could not confirm this fact. (We thank U Cerasi, G Comez, E Lucci, L Lucciarini, N Pietrella and especially F Della Rosa for helping with this research.) He also claimed he was a pupil of Felice Beato—one of the most important European photographers of the 19th century—whom he met in Garibaldi’s army when it was defending Rome against the French in 1848. According to Gesualdo, both followed Garibaldi into exile in the United States and, in 18521860 they photographed the Second Opium War. From there, Panunzi emigrated to Argentina. None of , to China, where in this appears to have any real substance. In a letter to the authors, Colin Osman, an expert on Beato, wrote: I think that the person who taught Benito Panunzi was definitely not Felice Beato. Information about Beato’s early life is sparse and sometimes contradictory, butis unlikely that he was photographing in 1848 and certainly not teaching. The first date he, [...] it himself, gave was , when he said that he bought his first and only lens in Paris. In 1854 and 1855 he 1851was in Constantinople with his sister, who married the British photographer and engraver James Robertson. It seems certain that his brotherJames Robertson, made Beato his assistant and taught him photography during 1856-57. Cf. Hélène -in-law, Bayou, Felice Beato et l’école de Yokohama, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, 1994.

²⁶ El Nacional, 7/4/1868.

²⁷ Zoccola exhibited photos at the Continental Exhibition held in 1882 in Buenos Aires and received a copper medal. Around 1887 he had a photography business in 197 Cangallo Street, with a partner by the name of Cella, and he claimed to specialise in portraits of children, groups and views. See Arnaldo Cunietti-Ferrando, ‘Los fotógrafos de la Exposición Continental de 1882’. Proceedings of the Fourth Argentine Congress on the History of Photography, Buenos Aires, 1995, and Juan Gómez, La fotografía en la Argentina. Su historia y evolución en el siglo XIX, published by the author, Buenos Aires, 1986.

²⁸ Plano Mercantil de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Mitre Library, catalogue 548.

²⁹ We know of two folders with photos signed by Panunzi mounted on a passepartout. One is in the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles; the other belongs to Carlos Sánchez Idiart, of Buenos Aires. We also know of two albums: one belongs to César Gotta, of Buenos Aires, and the other to Gladys and Mike Kessler, of California. In October 1990, Sotheby’s in New York auctioned photographs by Panunzi and gave the following reference: Fotografía Artística. Álbum de vistas y costumbres de Buenos Ayres. Buenos Aires, Fusoni Hnos, Mackern Hermanos, circa 1865. We are grateful to C Sánchez Idiart for this information.

³⁰ The collector S Makarius has a photo signed by Panunzi called The Maize Treader. It is a reproduction of an engraving and very similar to a Pallière lithograph of the same name. The engraving, however, has a vertical (portrait) format whereas the photo has a horizontal (landscape) format and includes more scenery.

³¹ So might Pallière and Gonnet. One of the latter’s photographic albums, entitled Memories of Buenos Aires, has a hand-written note on the top side of the first page which says: Par (by) Pallière.

³² Julio E Payró, El pintor Juan León Pallière, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA), Buenos Aires, 1961, p.39.

³³ Until a few years ago it could be consulted in the Manuel Gálvez Municipal Library, but apparently it has been stolen.

³⁴ The photo of Jones with the Indians and news of the trip were published in Lewis Jones, La colonia galesa, El Regional, Rawson, 1993, p.137. The original Welsh edition was: Lewis Jones, Y Wladfa Gymreig (The Welsh Colony), Caernarfon, 1898. In his book The Paraná; with Incidents of the Paraguayan War. South American Recollections from 1861 to 1868, Edward Stanford, London, 1868, Thomas Hutchinson confirms the visit of Jones and the Indians to Buenos Aires in 1867. The former British Consul in Rosario states that the Tehuelches were Francisco, the cacique, Kilcham, who is a great hunter, Yelouk, Weasel, Kitchkskum and Haisho. Levaggi, op. cit., mentions a letter dated Buenos Aires, 6 September 1867, according to which Uaish’ho, Quilcham, Chichcocum, Francisco, Yeluc and Uisel, complained to the Ministry of War because they were not getting the promised subsidy of mares, clothes and food supplies. They were ‘poor, wretched and entirely dependent’ on hunting. Although the names were spelt in different ways—a very common occurrence since indigenous languages were not written—we can assume they are the same people.

³⁵ Néstor R Ramponi and Hernán López Peña, of the Banco de la Nación Argentina, for whose opinion we are grateful.

³⁶ This was not unusual in those days. Albums published in the 1890s by Witcomb mixed photos taken by Alejandro Witcomb and his employees with others taken ten or fifteen years earlier by Christiano Junior, who had sold his studio and negatives to Witcomb in 1880.

³⁷ Year III, 67, 13/1/1902.

³⁸ JM Paladino Giménez, op. cit., p.21.

³⁹ Catálogo general de los productos nacionales y extranjeros y animales vivos presentados a la Exposición Nacional Argentina en Córdoba, 1871. Panunzi’s work was among those sent by the province of Buenos Aires (group 1, class 1, category 2, number 46).

⁴⁰ The exhibitions that Alejandro Witcomb put on at the turn of the century in his photo gallery were of photopainting, the same as those of Fernando Paillet, in Esperanza, during the 1930s.

⁴¹ Comitato della Camera Italiana di Commercio ed Arti, Gli Italiani nella Repubblica Argentina, parte prima, esposizione generale, Buenos Aires, 1906.

⁴² Ofelia Manzi, Sociedad Estímulo de Bellas Artes, Publicaciones Atenas, Buenos Aires, no date. Manzi spelt the name Panunzio.

⁴³ The authors thank the Canale family for the reproduction of Panunzi’s signature on the above mentioned document. On the same episode, see José León Pagano, El arte de los argentinos, tome 1, author’s edition, Buenos Aires, 1937, p.307.

⁴⁴ Martín Malharro, ‘Del pasado. Páginas de un libro inédito’, Athinae, revista argentina de Bellas Artes, II, 15-16, Nov.-Dec. 1909, p.7.

⁴⁵ See Manuel Bilbao, Buenos Aires, desde su fundación hasta nuestros días, Juan A Alsina, Buenos Aires, 1902, p.584; Rómulo Carbia, San José de Flores, bosquejo histórico 1609-1906, Arnoldo Moen, Buenos Aires, 1906, p.60; Arnaldo Cunietti-Ferrando, San José de Flores, Honorable Concejo Deliberante de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1997, p.118, and Alberto SJ de Paula, La ciudad de La Plata. Sus tierras y su arquitectura, Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1987, p.166.

⁴⁶ Federal Capital Registry Office, section 2, number 32, 11/1/1894.


(This text was published in the book Buenos Aires. Ciudad y campaña (1860-1870) by Abel ALEXANDER, Pablo BUCHBINDER y Luis PRIAMO)