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PHOTOGRAPHY

OTHER PHOTOGRAPHIC FINDINGS

IN POSE

Two friends. Rivera (Uruguay), or Santana do Livramento (Brazil. Circa 1895.


Portrait in business card format ("Carte-de-visite" in French), vintage gelatin silver copy. Measures. Photograph: 9 x 5.6 cm. Secondary support in beige cardboard: 10.4 x 6.4 cm. Advertising printed on the original support: On the front and on its lower margin: "M. Brunel / Rivera y Livramento" Then and on the entire back: "Swiss Photography / M. Brunel / Portraits in Oil, Pencil, Watercolor, Porcelain / Reproductions - Enlargements / Rivera (Uruguay) and Santana do Livramento (Brazil) / The cliches are preserved.” Work in good condition.


We are facing a classic "Carte-de-visite" from the so-called "late period", if we stick to the thickness of the secondary support, its special toothing, the color, the elaborate advertising typography, the magnificent lithographic drawing of its little angels dropping evidence photographs and finally the silver gelatin paper copy.


Photographer Mauricio Brunel (1852-1925) was born in the Canton of Lugano and, like so many Europeans, emigrated to South America in search of better economic opportunities. Around 1874 he settled in Montevideo (Uruguay) as a professional photographer and the following year he moved to the town of Tacuarembó. Finally, in 1886 he opened the doors of his studio in the border city of Rivera with a branch in neighboring Santana do Livramento (Brazil). He called it Swiss Photography, in honor of the land of his origin.


In Rivera he worked intensely among Uruguayan and Brazilian clients, always in the field of social portraiture where he achieved great prestige. For example, a studio portrait of a gaucho (circa 1892) wearing fine country clothes, a large dagger on his belt, boleadoras, a whip, and boots with spurs is considered one of his most successful works. Like all professionals of the time, he offered clients from both countries the alternative of pictorial portraits in their various techniques, such as watercolor, oil, pastel and even porcelain.


The work that we offer here, a magnificent portrait, shows the manly friendship of two men, in this case represented by the simple gesture of lighting their cigarettes. Both pose standing and, from their clothing, we infer that they represent the countryside and the city. The painted curtain -one of the best we have seen- is of undeniable visual beauty, where a staircase symbolically climbs between columns and garlands.


Abel Alexander

President of the Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography



S.O.XIX - GOM
AUTHOR MAURICIO BRUNEL

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