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[Photograph album of city and landscape views of Brazil], [between 1890 and 1910]
94/251  
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Description
Large photographs (23 x 29.5 cm) are mounted to rectos and versos of 33 leaves of heavy white cardboard, one to a page; smaller photographs (13 x 18 cm or smaller) are mounted two, three, or five to a page; two photographic panoramas, one of Porto Alegre (12 x 62 cm), and one of Sa~o Paulo (21 x 80 cm) are folded into segments, each panorama mounted across two facing pages so it can be unfolded to its full extension; each photograph has detailed caption added in pen; last four leaves are blank.
Background
Album of photographs of cities and landscapes of Brazil from 1890-1910, including 23 large-format photographs, two signed by the Gaensly & Lindemann studio of Guilherme Gaensly and Rodolfo Lindemann. The album, purchased from a Glasgow stationer, and perhaps compiled by a Scottish Presbyterian missionary to Brazil, contains photographs of many different Brazilian cities, documenting their streets, civic and commercial buildings, churches, residences, public parks and botanical gardens, municipal waterworks, trolley cars, and railroads: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Pernambuco (Recife), Bahía (Salvador de Bahía), and Porto Alegre. Also included are photos of the states of Para, and Parana. Outside the cities, the photographer has captured views of the countryside and jungle, including rivers--the Tocantins, the São Joao--waterfalls, fishing boats and ferries, and dense jungles of ferns, coconut palms, and bamboo, and the curious rock formations of Vila Velha. The photos of native peoples such as the Amazonian Indians, and the Gavião or Urubu Kaapor Indians, as well as Brazilian blacks, posing in front of their mud and thatch huts, and selling water, pineapples, bananas, and bread in the streets and open air markets. There are some excellent images of Guarani Indians in full war costume, wearing bracelets and necklaces made of human teeth, and Gavião Indians, some wearing feather headresses, others clothed in straw costumes and towering straw and feather headresses. Also included are photos of churches in various cities: Penha Church in Pernambuco; the Italian church and the English church in Bahía, and a large Italianate church in Pará. In Novo Friburgo, near Rio, a small house with elaborate gingerbread work is identified as the house of Rev. Dr. Kyle; Rev. John M. Kyle and his wife served as missionaries to Brazil for the Presbyterian Church in America, in the 1880s and 1890s, and were posted to Novo Friburgo in 1891. There also two spectacular large photographs of the São Paulo Railway, a privately owned British railway company which operated the route from the seaport of Santos via São Paulo to Jundiaí. Although only two of the large photographs are signed "Gaensly & Lindemann," with their studio address at Rua 15 de Novembro in São Paulo, many others in the album, including the two three-part city panoramas of Porto Alegre and São Paulo, also appear to be the work of the Swiss-born Brazilian photographer Guilherme Gaensly who opened a studio in São Paulo in 1894. Some of the smaller photographs may have been taken by the amateur photographer who compiled the album.
Extent
1 album (146 photographic prints) : albumen ; 28 x 38 cm (album)
Restrictions
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UC Regents. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Availability
Open for research. STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections for paging information.