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PHOTOGRAPHY

OTHER PHOTOGRAPHIC FINDINGS

Train station. Playón of cargo. Las Flores, province of Buenos Aires. Circa 1885.

Albumen print -18 x 24.5 cm- mounted on a rigid secondary support from the period, at the foot of which and written in graphite pencil a title in Italian is read: “Strada Ferrata. Las Flores. Argentine".


Las Flores is a head town of the district of the same name located in the center-west of the Province of Buenos Aires; and created by decree of the Governor of Buenos Aires Juan Manuel de Rosas on December 25, 1839 on lands belonging to him and his family. After the fall of his government the lands were expropriated, and on March 25, 1856, Don Manuel Venancio Paz founded the main city with the name of El Carmen de Las Flores.


Population dedicated to agriculture and livestock, the arrival of the railroad in 1872 meant a renewed impulse for its entire area of ​​influence, not only due to the rapid transfer of its inhabitants to other towns or to the city of Buenos Aires but, mainly, to transport their products, those that arrived at the station in slow carts pulled by oxen.


Precisely in this photograph taken in open air, we can see more than thirty high-wheeled flats drawn by oxen, four smaller horse-drawn carriages -one of them in the foreground- and piles of wood and firewood. Proud of their harvest and stopped in front of the station, the workers wait for the train. All of them -some Creoles, Italians and Spaniards many others- observe the photographer's camera placed on top of some construction, from an ideal position to achieve this wide view, with all its protagonists -the station, the workers and their cars- in the upper half of the image, and in the lower half, the earth furrowed with his footprints.


A magnificent testimony about the history of Las Flores through this photograph from the end of the 19th century and, which today more than 130 years away, becomes a reminder of the hard work and sacrifice of those men and women.

S.O.IV-LOM

AUTHOR FOTÓGRAFO NO IDENTIFICADO

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