Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
[Photograph album of city and landscape views of Brazil], [between 1890 and 1910]
94/251
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Title: [Photograph album of city and landscape views of Brazil]
Collection number: 94/251
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
1 album
(146 photographic prints) : albumen ; 28 x 38 cm (album)
Date: [between 1890 and 1910]
Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections
for paging information.
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.
Conditions on Use and Reproduction
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.
[Identification of item], [Photograph album of city and landscape views of Brazil] (Collection 94/251). UCLA Library Special
Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
UCLA Catalog Record ID:
760816
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.
According to John Hannavy's Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography (New York: Routledge, 2008, page 565), Wilhelm
Gaensly, one of Brazil's most celebrated landscape photographers, was born in the Swiss town of Felben-Wellhausen, but moved
with his mother to Bahía, Brazil in 1848, where they joined a community of Swiss immigrants. After studying with established
photographers such as Albert Henschel, Waldemar Lange, and Joseph Schleier, he established his own studio at No. 1, Ladeira
de São Bento in Bahía, winning acclaim for his large collection of views of Bahía Gaensly moved to São Paulo in 1894 to set
up a second studio, leaving Lindemann behind to manage the Bahía studio. For almost twenty years, Gaensly worked extensively
for the São Paulo Tramway Light and Power Company, and for various government agencies. When his partnership with Lindemann
ended in 1900, Gaensly continued to work as "Photographia Gaensly." His photographs of the fishermen's huts and canoes on
the outskirts of Bahía are famous for their beauty. He also photographed the British Church in Bahía, the first Protestant
church there, a historic building which was demolished in 1975.
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.
Bound in brown grained leather covers; gold-stamped cover title in gold; inner gilt dentelles; gray, green, and white glossy
marbled endpapers; stationer's name "A. Duthie. Glasgow" stamped in lower right corner of front pastedown.
Part of the
Photograph Album Collection (Collection 94) in UCLA Library Special Collections.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
A. Duthie (Firm: Glasgow, Scotland).
Gaensly, Guilherme, 1843-1928, photographer.
Lindemann, Rodolfo Frederico Francisco, approximately 1852-, photographer.
Restaurante Progredior (São Paulo, Brazil) São--Photographs.
Albumen prints.
Blacks--Brazil--Photographs.
Blacks--Brazil--Social life and customs--Photographs.
Botanical gardens--Brazil--Photographs.
Brazil--Photographs.
Brazil--Rural conditions--Photographs.
Brazil--Social life and customs--Photographs.
Caravans--Brazil--Photographs.
Carriages and carts--Brazil--Photographs.
Church buildings--Brazil--Photographs.
Coconut palm--Brazil--Photographs.
Ferns--Brazil--Photographs.
Ferries--Brazil--Photographs.
Indians of South America--Clothing--Brazil--Photographs.
Par? (Brazil : State)--Photographs.
Paran? (Brazil : State)--Photographs.
Parks--Brazil--Photographs.
Parque Estadual de Vila Velha (Brazil)--Photographs.
Photograph albums
Photograph albums--Brazil--1890-1910.
Photographic prints
Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)--Photographs.
Recife (Brazil)--Photographs.
Reservoirs--Brazil--São Paulo--Photographs.
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)--Photographs.
Salvador (Brazil)--Photographs.
Smacks (Fishing boats)--Brazil--Photographs.
Street-railroads--Brazil--São Paulo--Photographs.
São Paulo (Brazil)--Buildings, structures, etc.--Photographs.
São Paulo Railway--Photographs.
Urubu Kaapor Indians--Clothing--Photographs.
Viaducts--Brazil--São Paulo--Photographs.
Waterfalls--Brazil--Photographs.
Waterworks--Brazil--São Paulo--Photographs.