Buenos Aires. Plaza de Mayo. Circa 1905.

Gelatin silver print, toned in sepia. Single exemplar. Measurements: 18 x 24 cm / 7.08 x 9.44 in. Photograph with author's reference written in capital letters on the glass negative, bottom left: "AC / Buenos-Aires / Plaza de Mayo". Work in good condition. It is displayed framed.

In mid-1843, and four years behind the European cradle, the revolutionary photography finally landed in the city of Buenos Aires; those first daguerreotypes and their successors, the brand-new photographers, through the negative-positive process, settled for the most part around the current Plaza de Mayo.

These professionals exploited the most profitable segment of the business, that is, social portraiture, but a few audacious people decided to leave their comfortable studios and record through their cameras, tripods and complex outdoor laboratories that thriving city through new urban views. 

Obviously their first objective was to document the very close and historic squares 25 de Mayo and Victoria, at that time divided by the Recova Vieja. Today we can highlight the names of some of those pioneers of the daguerreotype and wet plates, such as Carlos D. Fredricks y Cía., Edmund Lebeaud, Rafael Castro y Ordóñez, Adolfo Alexander, Esteban Gonnet, Benito Panunzi, Christiano Junior, Carlos Feltscher, Samuel Boote, James Niven, Alejandro S. Witcomb, Emilio Halitzky, Samuel Rimathé or the mythical Argentine Amateur Photographic Society (SFAA).

The methodology of many of them was the realization of panoramic shots, strategy to cover that central space and its most emblematic public and private buildings. For this purpose, they always looked for a high chamber point, such as the Government House in this case.

To the aforementioned professionals we must now add a new photographic signature, of which we only know for now its monogram "AC", who towards the first years of the 20th century carried out a valuable survey of the downtown area of ​​the city of Buenos Aires -two more Buenos Aires gelatins by this author are conserved in a private collection consulted- of course destined for the sale of interested residents and travelers.

The unprecedented view that we offer today is an almost total panorama of the new Plaza de Mayo -unified after the demolition of the Recova Vieja in August 1883- which, from a certain height, shows us from left to right Victoria Street with Defensa and on the building on that corner we can see -probably- the last aerial pose box for portraits of Buenos Aires, in this case of the Photograph "La Victoria" (113 Defensa Street), a fact that we thank the researcher Roberto Ferrari.

Continuing our walk we see the May Pyramid in its original location -it would only be moved in 1912 and behind that national monument, the mutilated Cabildo building without its tower and with the three arches on the right demolished due to the opening of the new Avenue de Mayo (1894) and finally the top of the newspaper "La Prensa" (1898).

You can also appreciate the careful landscaping of that Plaza de Mayo with its wide sidewalks, well-cared flower beds, tall trees and water fountains; looking more closely, we rescued advertising displays and, among the few passersby, the passing of a priest in a hat and a black cassock very close to a street sweeper in white with his cart of brooms… Faith and Work!

By Abel Alexander

President of the Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography S.O.VI-EGL