Portrait of a gringo in Buenos Aires. Circa 1862.

Portrait in "carte-de-visit" format and printed on albuminous paper -measures: 10.3 x 6.3 cm / 4.05 x 2.48 in- mounted on a secondary rigid cardboard support. On the back and center, the artistic photographic advertisement of a little angel among branches and flowers holding the poster of the Study of: "Carlos Roever. Calle Sn. Martín 91 - 91. Buenos Aires" The work presents a cut on its lower edge.

It is an excellent full-length portrait of character, made in a studio and that allows us to appreciate the figure of a young foreigner dressed with great elegance and in the Creole style of the River Plate. That was a social custom of the time that is documented even in the early stage of the daguerreotype. Around the person portrayed, classic elements of the pose gallery can be appreciated, such as the backdrop and the carpet with artistic drawings. Natural overhead lighting is complicated by the hat, but the photographer solves it with a strong light beam that comes from the left. The entire pose strategy was arranged by Roever himself, who used a smooth, clear and neutral background to highlight the manly figure.

The gentleman with the mustache and trimmed beard poses in his elegant South American garb in front of the four-lens camera. He wears a harmonious wide-brimmed white hat, an English poncho with guards, a light shirt, a neckerchief and long boots. In his hands he exhibits a drawn verijero knife, the one with its Uruguayan-style leather sheath.

Information about the German photographer Carlos Roever is really scarce; in our collection of trade guides we locate it established in Buenos Aires between the years 1862 to 1866 and always with a single portrait studio on 91 San Martín Street. This European professional operated at the height of the French format "carte-de-visit "; only two advertisements are known stamped on the back of his works, this one with the little angel's vignette and another stating: "Photograph of Carlos Roever. Calle S. Martín 91. Buenos Aires". Closely linked to the foreign community of Buenos Aires, Carlos Roever portrayed Robert C. Kirk, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, around 1863.

It is interesting to note that through the Buenos Aires press Carlos Roever offered for sale the new military views on the bombing of the Spanish squadron to the port of Valparaíso. On March 31, 1866, and for three hours, the ships of Spain -in war with Chile- fired 2,600 grenades causing damage of 15 million pesos, an enormous figure at the time.

Recent investigations carried out in the archive of the historian José Arturo Montenegro of Brazil, provide information on Carlos Roever and his photographic relationship with Paraguay towards the first years of the 1860s. In turn, the National Library of Montevideo preserves the photographic reproduction of Carlos Roever on an equestrian painting of the Paraguayan Marshal Francisco Solano López.

By Abel Alexander

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