Dozens of Italian photographers worked in Brazil during the Empire and First Republic, but most of their work did not survive and is not accessible today. Currently, it is impossible to find more than a dozen photographs by most of these professionals in Brazilian museums and archives, according to researcher Livia Raponi, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Rio de Janeiro. The scarcity of these records is in stark contrast to the vast collections featuring other foreigners, such as Frenchmen Victor Frond (1821–1881), Augusto Stahl (1828–1877), and Marc Ferrez (1843–1923). Nonetheless, Italians settled in various regions throughout the country, received awards at national events and official titles from the Empire, documented public projects and urban transformation, and were pioneers of cinematographic exhibitions.
Nine of these photographers were included in the book Italianos detrás da câmera (Italians behind the camera; Editora UNESP, 2022), written by Raponi and photography historian Joaquim Marçal Ferreira de Andrade, curator of the Brasiliana Fotográfica portal at the Brazilian National Library. The selection criteria included the availability of digitized images in memory institutions and the representation of various parts of Brazil, from the South to the Amazon. Supported by the Italian Embassy in Brazil and accompanied by the exhibition titled Italian photographers in the early flowering of Brazilian photography, held at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center (CCBB) in Rio de Janeiro, in October and November of 2022, and in Brasília, from last March to last June, the book aims to encourage research about these artists.
The scant availability of images reflects the relative obscurity into which most of the pioneering Italian photographers within Brazil fell. In 2005, in an article titled “O exórdio de uma cultura urbana no Brasil no final do século XIX e início do século XX” (“The exordium of an urban culture in Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”), architect and art historian Maria Pace Chiavari, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), wrote: “The work produced by French, German, and English photographers who worked in Brazil inspired countless publications; however, there is a lack of studies on the Italians who settled across the country, leaving important documentation of their experiences.” According to Marçal, the void remains and studies focused on these professionals remain “a wide-open field.”
Marçal compares the Italians’ legacy to that of the French, who left their mark on Brazil with the arrival of the French Artistic Mission in 1816. However, the Italians arrived in the country under different conditions. There were immigrants looking to make a living, engineers who photographed their work, and professionals from other fields who also dedicated themselves to capturing images. “The Italians didn’t have the same institutional support as the French. They came to work. And, when we take a closer look at the history of Brazilian photography, we see that many of the local photographers were taught by Italian professors. Many of the photographers passing through, who depicted people in small towns and villages, were Italian,” states Marçal. At times, their very existence was almost exclusively recorded in references and advertisements in the local press.
Virgilio Calegari / Acervo Fotográfico, Museu de Comunicação Hipólito José da CostaUndated photograph of Virgilio Calegari in the exhibition room of his studio in Porto AlegreVirgilio Calegari / Acervo Fotográfico, Museu de Comunicação Hipólito José da Costa
Among the itinerants were names such as Nicola Maria Parente (1847–1911), born in the Basilicata region of southern Italy. Parente, who was also a dentist, set up studios in cities such as Goiana (Pernambuco) and João Pessoa (Paraíba), making a living by selling business cards and family portraits. In 1897, he returned from a trip to France with a copy of the Lumière brothers’ cinematograph, which he used to hold the first movie viewing session in the capital of Paraíba that same year. In May of 1911, while living in the town of Abaeté, currently Abaetetuba (Pará), the photographer died in an accident: he was experimenting with an oxygen generator he had created for his work as a dentist when the invention exploded.
Nowadays, one of the most prominent names among the old Italian photographers is Vincenzo Pastore (1865–1918), who opened studios in 1894 in São Paulo and, for a number of years, in Potenza and Bari, in Italy. His most famous work is a series of images of urban workers, taken in the 1900s and 1910s, which now belong to the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS). But this wasn’t always the case. These images, kept in a shoebox, remained forgotten for almost the entire 20th century, and only achieved their current level of notoriety thanks to the donation made by pianist Flavio Varani, the photographer’s grandson, to the IMS, in 1996.
The photographs show shoe shiners, washerwomen, and porters moving about the city, which was beginning to modernize and grow. The collection is particularly distinctive: at the time, the prints were not sold, but were printed on scraps of photo paper and displayed on the walls of his São Paulo studio. Pastore was recognized as a portrait artist and enjoyed great commercial success, according to historian Fabiana Beltramim, a visual studies researcher and author of the book Entre o estúdio e a rua: A trajetória de Vincenzo Pastore, fotógrafo do cotidiano (From the studio to the street: The career of Vincenzo Pastore, a photographer of daily life; EDUSP, 2016). The book is based on the dissertation she defended the previous year within the History Department of the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP).
“These images stray from the tradition that portrayed exoticism and slavery in Brazil to satisfy the curiosity of foreign tourists,” states Beltramim. The researcher argues that in Pastore’s photographs of workers released from slavery and European immigrants, taken after slavery was abolished, he embodied a style known in Italy as arte per via (art in the streets), which shows people going about their daily business. According to Beltramim, Pastore’s urban depictions harness this tradition of creating a visual archive of types and customs, but he was interested in the contradictions of urban life in São Paulo. “He was attuned to the affability of the working class, who made the streets a place for work and play. And he understood the ambiguities of this modern age. Because of his keen eye for informal work, I called him a ‘photographer of daily life,’” she says.
Guido Boggiani / Sistema Museale dell'Università degli Studi di FirenzeÍndia Caduveo (Mbayá), an undated image taken by Guido Boggiani in Mato Grosso do SulGuido Boggiani / Sistema Museale dell'Università degli Studi di Firenze
The records are even more abundant in a few other states. For example, Rio Grande do Sul, according to art historian Zita Rosane Possamai, of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). During the same period, Italians also emerged in the urban images of another capital in the process of modernizing: Porto Alegre. At the turn of the century, a certain rivalry developed between Italian photographer Virgilio Calegari (1868–1937) and Jacintho Ferrari (?–1935), of Italian heritage. Calegari—featured in the book published by Raponi and Marçal—documented the city’s transformation during the first decade of the 20th century, when the old colonial quarters gave way to the republican metropolis.
“Calegari settled in Porto Alegre, where he lived until the end of his life. He followed the entire modernization process within the city,” says Possamai, who published several articles about the photographer’s work. “Through his work, he reflects this metamorphosis. His images contain new elements, such as arrivals at the port’s docks, portraying masses of people, a novelty at the time.” These images result in the album Porto Alegre, produced between 1908 and 1912. According to Possamai, the author was inspired by other series of urban images from that period—in his library, there was an album about New York. “Virgilio Calegari and Jacintho Ferrari were two of the city’s most renowned photographers. They competed for customers, especially within the upper class, which could afford to hire them,” says Possamai.
One of the first photographers known to have worked in Porto Alegre was also Italian. His name was Luís Terragno (1831–1891) and he settled in the capital in 1953, while touring various cities in what was then the São Pedro province. In addition to capturing images, the Genoese studied the chemical processes of photography and even created an emulsion from cassava. Terragno sought to adapt photographic techniques to Brazil’s climate, according to Marçal.
The photographer captured images of Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825–1891) and his son-in-law, Gastão de Orléans, the Count of Eu (1842–1922), in gaucho attire. The propaganda photographs were taken in 1865, when Brazil’s Army was passing through Rio Grande do Sul on its way to the Paraguayan War (1864–1870). At the time, Terragno had reportedly asked the emperor for permission to accompany the troops to the front lines and record the battles. As with all other photographers, his request was denied. “As a keen supporter of photography, the emperor was well aware of the power wielded by such images and did not want any records of the conflict to remain,” says Marçal.
Italianos detrás da câmera also highlights images produced by two artists best known for their work in another field. Namely, Ermanno Stradelli (1852–1926) and Guido Boggiani (1861–1902), who worked in the field of ethnography in the 19th century. Stradelli was the focus of Raponi’s dissertation, defended at the FFLCH’s Department of Modern Languages and Literature in 2018.
Ermanno Stradelli / Archivio Fotografico della Società Geografica ItalianaPeople of the tuxaua Antonio (Apurinã) and maloca do Marané (1889), a photograph captured by Ermanno Stradelli in the AmazonErmanno Stradelli / Archivio Fotografico della Società Geografica Italiana
Born into a wealthy family in Piacenza, Stradelli was influenced by the romantic mindset of his time, which instilled in him a taste for exploration. He was interested in the customs and cosmology of the Amazonian Indigenous peoples and organized, albeit without institutional backing, expeditions with both anthropological and geographic objectives, such as river mapping. His most well-known work is Vocabulário português-nheengatu — Nheengatu-português (Portuguese-Nheengatu and Nheengatu-Portuguese vocabulary), featuring a language developed from Indigenous languages widely spoken in colonial Brazil. It was published posthumously, in 1929, in the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute’s magazine. Since 2014, the book has been part of the Ateliê Editorial catalog. Anthropologist, historian, and folklorist, Luís da Câmara Cascudo (1898–1986) said that the work was “a true Amazonian encyclopedia.” According to Raponi, Cascudo’s interest, which resulted in the book Em memória de Stradelli (In memory of Stradelli; Livraria Clássica, 1936), was responsible for keeping the memory of the photographer-explorer alive.
Boggiani, from Piedmont, was a renowned painter in Italy, where he lived until the age of 27. A friend of the writer Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863–1938), he was driven by the same adventurous spirit as Stradelli to travel to South America and accompany expeditions to northern Argentina, Paraguay, and western Brazil. He photographed and wrote about the Chamacoco and Kadiwéu Indigenous peoples, which earned him praise from anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922–1997), who performed ethnographic work in the same region.
Equipped with more advanced developing technology than Stradelli, Boggiani was able to take remarkable portraits, by capturing unique features of his models, who seemed at ease in front of the camera, particularly women, notes Raponi. His trained eye as a painter emphasized elements such as face and body painting and women’s clothing. In some images, the Indigenous people are smiling, something that was not common in 19th century portraits.
Despite this closeness, and perhaps because of it, Boggiani suffered a premature, violent, and mysterious death. His remains were found in the Paraguayan Chaco region in 1904, with his skull crushed in and his camera buried some distance away. The reason for his murder by the Indigenous people who had so fascinated him remains unknown. “There is much speculation, ranging from jealousy over his involvement with Indigenous women to a reaction to the camera itself and its power to ‘steal the soul,’” notes Raponi.
The continued limited access to these photographs helps explain Chiavari’s complaint regarding the lack of historical studies on Italian photographers in Brazil. The surviving images captured by Stradelli are included in the Italian Geographical Society’s Photographic Archive. Boggiani’s images are featured in both public and private European collections. Possamai notes that in Rio Grande do Sul many of the photographs taken by Terragno, Calegari, and Ferrari belong to private collections.
Marçal hopes that other images can be found in the possession of heirs. Recovering them would be a way to rewrite the history of the Italians who settled in Brazil. “Look what happened with Pastore: after his descendants donated his photographs, he became a legend,” concludes the historian.
Books
ANDRADE, J. M. F. & RAPONI, L. Italianos detrás da câmera: Trajetórias e olhares marcantes no florescer da fotografia no Brasil. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2022.
BELTRAMIM, F. Entre o estúdio e a rua: A trajetória de Vincenzo Pastore, fotógrafo do cotidiano. São Paulo: EDUSP, 2016
RAPONI, L. (org.) A única vida possível: Itinerários de Ermanno Stradelli na Amazônia. São Paulo: Ed. UNESP, 2016.
