As a prologue
We can say that the history of Argentine photography –which began in Buenos Aires in the middle of 1843 –is still a building under construction and with this text we want to add one more brick –almost like a Masonic symbol– to this fascinating work, rescuing the work carried out among us by some pioneers of the camera, both professional and amateur, who, in addition to exercising the newest art of Niépce, Daguerre and Talbot, had in common their active affiliation with Masonry.
«An invention of the Devil»
«The desire to capture evanescent reflections is not only impossible as has been demonstrated by German research, but the mere desire to achieve it is already a blasphemy. God created man in His image and no machine built by man can capture the image of God. Is it possible that God would have abandoned His eternal principles and allowed a Frenchman from Paris to give the world an invention of the devil?».
That discovery caused great fear, as shown by the reproduced paragraph, a fragment of an opinion article from the German newspaper "Leipziger Stadzeiger", which was published shortly after the surprising invention of the daguerreotype was publicly revealed in Republican France – exactly on August 19, 1839 – thanks to the tenacious investigations of two eminent Frenchmen; the physicist and lithographer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) and the stage designer and inventor Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851).
If this was the reaction in Germany, a nation with advanced technological development at the time, imagine what happened in the rest of the world, including our distant country located in the south of South America and still anchored in a heavy colonial past not too far away, of course. Photography had finally arrived in these lands and would help change many and very diverse aspects of that closed nineteenth-century society.
Prophets of this new invention were the daguerreotypists, photographers and ambrotypists, mostly from different countries in Western Europe and even from the United States of America, who landed here full of commercial projects from the early years of the 1840s. They were mostly free and daring young people who mastered "cutting-edge technology", were able to communicate in several languages and had practical knowledge of chemistry, physics and artistic notions related to portraiture and landscaping.
The names behind the scenes
Many of these authentic adventurers were Masons and crossed the Atlantic in fragile ships, trusting in the traditional help of their brothers in South America, especially after 1852 with the fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who used to link the Masons with their enemies the Unitarians, although he knew how to cultivate friendship and common actions with some of them, such as, for example, the publicist and editor Pedro de Ángelis. The truth is that, after the defeat in the battle of Caseros and his departure from the government, Argentine Masonry experienced an important development driven by the lodges of Brazil and Uruguay, especially the Grand Lodge of Montevideo, with José Roque Pérez, a confessed federalist who became the Grand Master of the Supreme Council and Grand Orient of Argentina.
«This is how Masonic associationism, encouraged by the return of several exiles from the Rosas era, such as Sarmiento himself – initiated in 1854 in a lodge in Chile – spread rapidly throughout a wide sector of Buenos Aires society, becoming a privileged place of sociability for intellectuals, military men, businessmen and merchants linked to strengthening Argentina's insertion in the world market». [1]
The «Magna Tenida» held in July 1860 at the headquarters of the local Masonry – which was then located in the old Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires – is remembered for the appointment of the highest 33° degree to several of the most prominent personalities of the country, all illustrious brothers, including the then president of the Republic, Santiago Derqui, the general and at that time governor of Entre Ríos, Justo José de Urquiza, and his Buenos Aires counterpart, Bartolomé Mitre. In this atmosphere of Masonic brotherhood, the photographers found the right conditions to make their dreams come true.
Some of them were sons of Masons and shared with their parents the same principles of brotherhood among men and the fight against prejudice, superstition, fanaticism, ignorance, inequality, intolerance and class privileges.
Frenchmen –of course–, Englishmen, Germans, Austrians, Italians, Hungarians and Americans, but also some Argentines, are among the pioneer Masonic photographers who acted prominently in our country during the second half of the 19th century. Men who were champions of the idea of progress, poured their talent into all the artistic and documentary initiatives carried out at that time in the field of young national photography.
These "architects" of the image moved through two well-defined fields, professional and amateur photography; The former opened elegant studios in Buenos Aires and the main cities of the interior, exploiting the most profitable segment of the business, that is, social portraiture, and, exceptionally, also venturing into the recording of urban and rural views and popular types. The latter came together around 1889 – the 50th universal anniversary of the daguerreotype – in the important Argentine Amateur Photographic Society based in Buenos Aires.
The professionals not only portrayed the society of the time, but their salons were also a meeting point for the local Masonic communities, who attended the iconographic sessions to proudly perpetuate themselves, of course displaying on their chests their insignia of belonging through solemn studio portraits.
Adolfo Alexander at the door of his Photographic Studio, located at 79 Artes Street (currently Carlos Pellegrini and Bartolomé Mitre), Buenos Aires City. Circa 1878. Abel Alexander Collection.
In this sense, the workshop of the German Adolfo Alexander (1822 - 1881) was very popular. He had introduced the sailor Luis Piedrabuena to Freemasonry in 1863. Seventeen years later, Alexander himself was appointed a 33° Degree Mason of the Lodge Obediencia a la Ley N° 13, of which he was secretary and, during that same year, all its members posed in the glassed-in cabin where he made all his records using natural light. There he was photographed with the eighteen members of the Commission for the Protection of the Wounded, a Masonic initiative that arose as a result of the bloody battles for the capitalization of Buenos Aires. For his performance in these war events, the Supreme Council of Freemasonry had awarded him the highest 33° Degree [2]. His remains rest in the pantheon of his own Lodge in the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires.
General Justo José de Urquiza, photographed in Buenos Aires. 1852. Daguerreotypist: Antonio Pozzo (attributed). Collection of the National Historical Museum of Uruguay.
In the list of professional photographers, it is necessary to remember the name of Antonio Pozzo (1829 - 1910), Argentine by birth and of Italian family origin, descendant of the Napoleonic general Pozzo de Borgho. Pozzo learned the trade in Buenos Aires after 1845 with the North American daguerreotypists Bennet or North and, by 1850, he was already working as a "Municipal Photographer" and with shops opened first at 113 La Piedad Street and later at 590 Victoria, with his house "Fotográfica Alsina", always in this city. There were numerous historical events that he recorded, among them, in 1852 he photographed General Urquiza in the daguerreotype in the famous shot in Palermo after Caseros. Pozzo, a true rebel, was expelled from the Freemasonry around 1872 and, at the end of that decade, he documented the famous Desert Campaign. Very interesting, he was a pioneer collector; his son donated an important set of daguerreotypes –of his own authorship and of others– that he had collected, to the National Historical Museum.
There were many Masonic photographers of that time, such as the Frenchman Emil Mangel du Mesnil (1815 – 1890), a daguerreotypist in Mexico, active in Montevideo and settled in Buenos Aires around 1856 with a business called “Casa Central de Fotografía”, located at 245 Victoria Street in this city. Du Mesnil was also an active photographic supplier and is remembered for the publication of the important album Notoriedades del Plata.
The Masonic militancy of another Frenchman, Monsieur Adrien Dieu, was such that, on the back of his popular "carte-de-visite" he printed the Masonic symbols of the square and compass, accompanied by the initial "D"; the prominent Mason Alejandro Magariños Cervantes had his portrait taken in his studio.
Printed and lithographed on parchment, the document indicates the appointment of Isaac Giles to the Master degree by the lodge "God and Liberty" in the Buenos Aires town of Ranchos. Work of R. Kratzenstein.
And among the names worth highlighting, we include that of Rodolfo Kratzenstein, a photographer and lithographer of recognized prestige in Buenos Aires, since 1856 associated with Masoni and later on his own. We have found two Masonic diplomas made in his house, indicating "Lithography of Brother Rodolfo Kratzenstein Calle Sn. Martín n° 56 Buenos Aires." It is striking that he does not appear in the rigorous study by A. Lappas [3], a mandatory reference for the historical analysis of Argentine Freemasonry.
The interior of the country had figures such as the Cuyo native Desiderio Aguiar (1830 - 1896) active in San Juan, Mendoza and the city of Rosario, who is the protagonist of one of the most intriguing searches in Argentine photography: his record of the destroyed city of Mendoza, victim of the earthquake of March 20, 1861; it is said that Aguiar photographed it when it was still shaking from the aftershocks of the quake. In the city of Paraná we find another professional brother Mason with a camera, we refer to the Austrian Enrique Kessler, with a long local career, and in Córdoba with the Englishman Jorge Briscoe Pilcher [4], closely linked to astronomical photography, based at 25 27 de Abril Street in the capital city. In that province, the government of Domingo F. Sarmiento promoted the construction of the Astronomical Observatory, and the Sanjuanino himself encouraged the arrival of the American Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who settled there in 1870, assuming the position of director of that observatory a year later and whom we consider to be the most determined promoter of astronomical photography. We must point out that Gould suffered a family tragedy that marked him forever; in the middle of summer and during a birthday celebration, two of his daughters along with their nurse drowned in the waters of the Primero River.
In a tour of the different provinces and willing to mention only a few examples, we are situated in Santa Fe, where the masons Adolfo F. Goupillant (from Esperanza) and Emilio Galassi (from Rafaela) developed their activities. In the province of Buenos Aires, an unusual record is owed to the "Fotografía Alemana" of Pergamino: its owner photographed the twenty members of a local Masonic lodge in the courtyard of a building with its members proudly displaying their bands and insignia.
There were many Masons who were fond of photography and very notable indeed. In almost all cases their advanced cameras complemented their respective professions. However, we must point out the fact that photography was also cultivated as a means of artistic expression.
In the daguerreotype era, the name of the Savoyard engineer and painter Carlos Enrique Pellegrini appears; although there is no certainty about his activity in this discipline, the existence of a daguerre camera in his Buenos Aires country house "La Silueta" is known. His son, the then President of the Nation, Dr. Carlos Pellegrini, donated to the Historical Museum in Buenos Aires –today, M. H. Nacional– in 1890, a set of daguerreotypes that were attributed to his authorship, several of them now studied are identified as works of other authors [5].
Already in the early practice of wet collodion, the mention of the surveyor and topographer Jaime Arrufó (1830 - 1876) is unavoidable, who, among other initiatives, gave a conference on photographic dissemination in 1864.
The English military man and mining engineer Francis Ignacio Rickard represents the audacity and adventure of those times: in the middle of winter he crossed the Andes mountain range in 1862 at risk of his life and, already in Mendoza, he photographed the city destroyed by the earthquake suffered only a year before.
Surveyors and photographers were the masons Vicente Pusso and Carlos Encina. The latter, together with Evaristo Moreno, both engineers, left in the summer of 1882 for that unexplored Patagonian territory between the Neuquén and Limay rivers to the Andean region, sent by Julio A. Roca. They accompanied the military forces commanded by Colonel Villegas carrying out surveying work, and, as a result of that expedition, they published in 1883 a Photographic Album of enormous historical value signed as editors by Encina, Moreno and Co.
We can also mention the doctors Domingo Parodi (Italian), photographically linked to the Paraguayan war, and the hygienist doctor Pedro N. Arata, about the latter we will say that around 1890 he brought to the country one of the two original copies of the contract [6] between the inventors Niépce and Daguerre –in this case the copy that belonged to the latter–, research carried out by Roberto Ferrari and today preserved in the Arata Library, in the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of Buenos Aires.
The German businessman Jacobo Peuser (1843 - 1901) was the editor of all the Masonic publications of his time; he introduced the first autotypies and photochromies and, together with the lawyer Alejo González Garaño among others, he was part of the mythical Argentine Amateur Photographic Society (1889 - 1926) which came to have more than 600 members.
Bromóleo mounted on an artistic cardboard, signed and titled. Artistic female portrait of great symbolism as it takes us back to biblical figures.
Being a public accountant, Hiram Gerardo Calógero [1885 - 1957] dedicated his life to the practice of artistic photography, especially the bromóleo process; he trained disciples and published Métodos de arte en fotografía [1942] where he summarizes his extensive experience in a unique book of its kind published in Spanish.
The contribution of Masonic photographers has been of enormous value both in the documentary and artistic fields; professionals and amateurs, Argentines and foreigners, have left us a legacy of inestimable value. A visual frieze that bears witness to the future of our country, a privileged window that allows us to view today the richness of our common past.
Notes:
[1] Susana Bandieri, “La masonería en la Patagonia”, in Estudios sociales, n. 38, first semester 2010, p. 20.
[2] In our family and in my own collection there are various testimonies that reflect his actions, such as, for example, the Masonic bands and even a handwritten letter from Adolfo Alexander - year 1879 - to the Minister of War Campos, recommending his son Alfredo Alexander to join the Desert Campaign as an infantry soldier and which Adolfo Alexander signs as a Mason, including the three Masonic points.
[3] Alcibíades Lappas, "La Masonería Argentina, a través de sus hombres". Buenos Aires. 1966.
[4] Cristina Boixadós, Images of Córdoba – Photographs by Jorge B. Pilcher, Buenos Aires, Ediciones de la Antorcha, 2017.
[5] Carlos G. Vertanessian, «Collection of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes», in Miniatures / Daguerreotypes. Storage furniture: counters and writing desks. Buenos Aires, National Historical Museum, 2019, pp. 100 – 101.
[6] The patent for the discovery was acquired by the French government, which made it freely available to humanity, facilitating its rapid expansion throughout the world.
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