Silver wedding Braun - Menéndez. January 5 - 1920.

Gelatin silver print -measures: 15.9 x 22 cm / 6.25 x 8.66 in- mounted on an embossed cardboard with the name of the photographic studio and its location: Punta Arenas. On the passe-partout, the date and reason for the social gathering portrayed in this image.

The group portrait shows us a good part of the Braun Menéndez family, with the ten children of their marriage, plus relatives and friends. The shot was made in the residence built in Punta Arenas between 1903 and 1906, designed by the French architect Antoine Beaulier, today the headquarters of the Regional Museum of Magallanes, declared a National Monument of Chile.

Josefina Menéndez Behety -José Menéndez's first-born daughter- and Mauricio Braun got married in 1895 in Punta Arena. By then, Mauricio Braun had already reached a solid economic position, exploiting land owned and leased. José Menéndez, on the other hand, the father of the bride, was already a successful businessman, to the point of being identified as "The King of Patagonia”. Mauricio Braun had arrived in Punta Arenas in 1874 with his Jewish family, fleeing from the Russia of the tsars. That marriage, let's continue with the protagonists of this image, promoted an economic alliance between both families that was finally sealed in 1908 giving rise to the famous Anonymous Import and Export Company of Patagonia, Menéndez, Braun, Blanchard y Cía., More hereinafter called Sociedad Anónima Importadora y Exportadora de la Patagonia; the "Anonymous", as the people baptized it.

Already in 1886, Mauricio Braun, with his 300,000 hectares, had partnered with José Nogueira, his brother-in-law, owner of a million hectares, to shape the Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego, in which José Menéndez also participated; years later, his father-in-law. Nogueira died in Arequipa and in 1893 his wife, Sara Braun, took control of the businesses and with her own capital formed the Sociedad Anónima Ganadera y Comercial Sara Braun.

The economic power of these families was almost unlimited, occupying the lands inhabited by the native settlers and acting without mercy on them. This was evidenced by the Commission for Historical Truth and New Deal with Indigenous Peoples, created in 2001 in Chile. We also find them in the repression that calmed the Patagonian and Magellan strikes that occurred in 1920-1921.

Remarkably, the trajectory of the photographer H. Lindorfs is not known; he is not registered in the book by Hernán Rodríguez Villegas, “Photographers in Chile 1900-1950”, and historian Margarita Alvarado has no references to him, who answered to our query: “nobody knows anything. They are those mysteries of photography”.

We are grateful for the research carried out by the Chilean researcher, Dr. Margarita Alvarado.

S.O.VIII-OHM