Processing History
Scope and Contents of Collection
Preferred Citation
Access
Acquisition Information
Arrangement
Biographical /Historical Note
Related Archival Materials
Publication Rights
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections
Title: Gilberto Ferrez collection of photographs of nineteenth-century Brazil
Creator:
Ferrez, Gilberto
Identifier/Call Number: 92.R.14
Physical Description:
44.15 Linear Feet
(35 boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1856-1940
Abstract: The collection comprises almost 1,000 photographic prints from the oeuvre of the Brazilian
photographer Marc Ferrez, whose work encompassed a photographic vision of imperial and early modern Brazil, as well as approximately
775 photographic
prints by photographers active in Brazil from 1860 to 1940. The photographers represented include J. S. Affonso; Carlos Bippus;
Fritz Büsch; Companhia
Photographica Brazileira; Guilherme Gaensly; Gaensly & Lindemann; João Goston; Pedros Hees; Alberto Henschel; Revert Henrique
Klumb; George
Leuzinger; Guilhermo Liebenau; Augusto Malta; Augusto Militaõ de Azevedo; Mortimer; Augusto Riedel; and Stahl & Wahnschaffe.
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection.
Click here for the
access policy .
Language of Material: Collection material is in Portuguese, French, and English.
Processing History
The collection was partially processed by Beth Ann Guynn in 1994, and a partial preliminary inventory was created. In 2016,
Guynn and Linda Kleiger
completed the processing and cataloging of the collection and encoded the finding aid written by Guynn. The finding aid was
updated by Guynn in
2020.
Scope and Contents of Collection
The present material represents a small selection from Gilberto Ferrez's vast collection of early Brazilian photography. Almost
1,000 photographs by
Marc Ferrez, Gilberto's grandfather, comprise Series I. The somewhat smaller Series II, comprises approximately 775 photographs
by other photographers
active in Brazil from 1860 to 1940.
Series I encapsulates Marc Ferrez's photographic output between 1860 and 1919. Brazilian states represented include Bahia;
Rio de Janeiro; Minas
Gerais; and São Paulo. Following the general breakdown of his oeuvre, roughly half of the images depict the state and city
of Rio de Janeiro and half
depict the remaining states listed above. The states, in turn, are organized by city or town. Present are landscapes; seascapes
and harbors; general
city views and panoramas; streets and street scenes; and views and details of individual buildings.
In the state of Rio de Janeiro, the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Petrópolis are particularly well represented. Ferrez turned
his camera repeatedly to
Guanabara Bay and Pão de Açúcar, jutting straight up out of the mouth of the bay. His panoramic views of the city, the bay
and its beaches were taken
from vantage points around the city including Pão de Açúcar and Corcovado mountain which overlooks the city from the west.
In addition to both sweeping
and detailed views of Avenida Central (including later views showing Ferrez's own Cinema Pathé), Rio's major streets and attendant
plazas are
systematically recorded. While many photographs were made to capture the city's remaining colonial buildings and monuments,
often shortly before
demolition, others show off its modern Belle Époque facades. For example, photographs of both the old French neoclassical
style Belas Artes building and
the new Belle Époque building can be found in this series. A small number of photographs document events in Rio, notably the
1893 Naval Revolts
(Revoltas da Armada).
The remainder of the series is organized thematically: agricultural subjects, especially depictions of Brazil's enormous coffee
fazendas and coffee
production in the 1880s in the years immediately surrounding the final abolition of the institution of slavery in 1888; boats
and ships; ethnographic
subjects including Ferrez's early portraits of Aimoré, Apiacá, and Toba people; occupational portraits, and street vendors;
and railroads, with some
obvious geographical cross-overs with the individual states and cities.
Series II contains approximately 775 photographs by photographers active in Brazil from 1860 to 1940. The series comprises
a mixture of vintage
photographs and modern copy prints along with a few photograph albums.
Photographers and studios represented include: J. S. Affonso; Carlos Bippus; Fritz Büsch; Companhia Photographica Brasileira;
Guilherme Gaensly;
Gaensly & Lindemann; João Goston; Pedros Hees; Alberto Henschel; Revert Henrique Klumb; George Leuzinger; Guilhermo Liebenau;
Augusto Malta; Augusto
Militaõ de Azevedo; Mortimer; Augusto Riedel; and Stahl & Wahnschaffe.
The largest group of photographs is by Augusto Malta, comprising approximately 250 vintage prints and an additional box of
46 modern copy prints.
Malta's photographs of Belle Époque Rio de Janeiro provide a good counterpoint to Ferrez's documentation of the city. He recorded
the Ajuda Convent in
1911, which had survived the initial building phase of Avenida Rio Branco, and the remodeling of the square in front of it,
renamed Praça Floriano
Peixoto, just before it was demolished to make way for Spanish developer Francisco Serrador's Beaux-Arts-style buildings that
housed the city's new
cinemas. Also included among Malta's photographs are images of Brazil's Exposição Nacional de 1908 and its Exposição do Centenário
da Independncia of
1922 to 1923.
There are 26 photographs by Gaensly and 33 by Gaensly & Lindemann. Leuzinger holdings include an album of 56 prints entitled
Photographies de Rio de Janeiro et des environs; 42 photographs that are either loose prints or mounted on disbound album pages; and an
annotated sales catalog, probably dating from 1864 or 1865. The album
Vistas, containing 33 cabinet card views of
Petrópolis, along with three additional views, is by Klumb. The third album present in the series,
Album de vistas de Porto
Alegre
, by Ferrari & Irmão, contains 14 prints. Azevedo is represented by 23 prints, and Bippus by 19 prints. The remainder of the
photographers included in the series are represented by ten or fewer images.
Also included in the series is a box of almost 200 modern copy prints of South American views held in the Biblioteca Nacional
de Venezuela, Caracas.
Photographers and studios of note include: Samuel Boote and Benito Panuzi (Argentina); Chaigneau y Lavoisier and C. L. Howsell
(Chile); Angel Mental
(Cuba); Eugenio Courret and Courret Hermanos (Peru); Pedro Amante; Bate and Company; and Charles Wallace Chute and Thomas
Brooks (Uruguay); and
Underwood & Underwood and the Keystone View Company (various countries). At the end of the series are found thirteen exhibition
catalogues for the
Academia Imperial de Belas Artes from the years between 1860 and 1884.
Preferred Citation
Gilberto Ferrez collection of photographs of nineteenth-century Brazil, 1860-1940, The Getty Research Institute, Accession
no. 92.R.14.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa92r14
Access
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Acquisition Information
Acquired in 1992.
Arrangement
Arranged in two series: Series I. Marc Ferrez photographs, 1860-1919, undated; Series II. Other photographers, 1856-1940,
undated.
Biographical /Historical Note
The Brazilian businessman, historian, curator, photographer, and collector, Gilberto Ferrez, was born into a family immersed
in the visual arts. His
great-grandfather and great-uncle, the sculptors Zépherin and Marc Ferrez, arrived in Brazil with the Mission artistique français
(Missão Artística
Francesa) in 1816. Greatly admiring the country, they settled there and Zépherin soon went on to design Brazil's first commemorative
medal, commissioned
for the 1822 coronation of Dom Pedro I.
Gilberto's grandfather was the photographer Marc Ferrez; and his father, Júlio Ferrez, a film director and cinematographer,
was also the Brazilian
Pathé Frères representative, selling Pathé equipment and films and running the Pathé cinema in Rio de Janeiro. Together his
grandfather, father, and
uncle Luciano used the Pathé connection to expand Marc's photography business into a firm encompassing both still and moving
images.
Gilberto João Carlos Ferrez (hereafter referred to as Gilberto so as to avoid confusion with other family members, who are
also referred to by first
name) was born in Rio de Janeiro on May 15, 1908. He was schooled in Brazil and Europe before being sent in 1927, at age 19,
to London by his father to
study English for a year, as knowing the language was essential for working in the family's cinema business. He returned to
Brazil in 1928 to join the
family firm, then known as Marc Ferrez Filhos. Four years later, on 23 June 1932, he married Mary Jessop Cotching da Fonseca
Dodd, with whom he had
seven daughters (Denise, 1935; Mônica, 1936; Liliane, 1939; Mary, 1942; Isabel, 1945; and twins Irene and Helena, 1948). In
1938 Júlio Ferrez gave the
firm, now renamed Marc Ferrez Filhos Limitada, to his three sons Gilberto, Eduardo and João. João sold his share of the business
to his two brothers in
1945, and in 1949 they renamed the firm Casa Marc Ferrez Cinemas, Electricidade Limitada. While Gilberto continued to be active
in both the firm, which
by then was investing in and building new movie theaters, and the profession, serving as chairman of the Cinematographic Distributor
Companies
Association in Rio de Janeiro from 1955 to 1974, he also developed and significantly expanded his photography, collecting,
research, writing and
curatorial interests.
After returning from England in 1928 Gilberto had found a mentor in antiques dealer Francisco Marques de Santo, who introduced
him to research in the
Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil. As a preservation measure, all of Marc Ferrez's were copied by one of hisformer laboratory
technicians, and Gilberto
began researching the photographs, dating them based on the buildings and monuments present in the images when Marc could
not remember the exact shoot
dates. From his grandfather's work, Gilberto expanded his interests to that of other photographers active in Brazil, and to
Brazilian iconography in
general. His research on Brazil led him to institutions in numerous European countries and in the United States. By 1935,
he had also begun amassing a
collection of photographs, coins, books, maps, prints, drawings, and other visual materials and documents relating to Brazil.
On August 2, 1930, Gilberto's first published photograph appeared in the "Fotografias de nossos leitores" section of
O
Cruzeiro
, with three more photographs appearing in the magazine's pages the following year. Two years later, in 1932, Gilberto's first
article, chronicling his exploration of Pico das Agulhas Negras, the fifth highest mountain in Brazil, and illustrated with
his own photographs, was
published in
O Cruzeiro. Over the next years, following a trajectory begun by his grandfather's photography trips, he
continued to travel and publish articles and photographs on the towns and regions of Brazil. Gilberto realized the first solo
exhibition of his
photographs,
Paisagens Brasileiras, in 1933 at the Pró Arte Sociedade de Artes, Letras e Ciências, Rio de Janeiro.
In 1941, Gilberto photographed the buildings of old Rio de Janeiro that were slated for demolition because they lay in the
path of construction of the
Avenida Presidente Vargas. His photographs of the lost São Pedro dos Clérigos church are among the few known views of this
culturally and
architecturally important structure. In counterpoint to his grandfather's interest in urban renewal, modernity and progress,
as demonstrated by Marc's
documentation of urban renewal projects such as the construction of Avenida Central between 1903 and 1906, to create a new,
modern thoroughfare for the
capital of Brazil, Gilberto's interests lay in the recording and preservation of urban history. But increasingly, rather than
taking his own photographs
to explore and record Brazil's built environment, Gilberto turned to research and writing about images created by others.
Marc Ferrez's photographic corpus, along with Brazilian photography in general, were the natural places for Gilberto to concentrate
his first efforts.
His essay "A fotografia no Brasil e um seus mais dedicados servidores: Marc Ferrez" was included in
Revista do patrimônio
histórico e artîstico
, no. 10 (1946) under the shortened title "A fotografia no Brasil." Although the number did not appear until 1953, this
article is considered to be the first study of the history of photography in Brazil. It was in fact one of the earliest essays
to have been written in
the newly emerging field of the history of photography, being nearly contemporaneous with another pioneering work, Beaumont
Newhall's more panoptic
The History of Photography (1948). This article was followed by "Um passeio a Petrópolis em companhia do fótografo Marc
Ferrez," for the 1948 edition of
Anuário do Museu Imperial (printed 1951). Over three decades after its appearance
Gilberto's pioneering first article was later expanded to book-length as
A fotografia no Brazil: 1840-1900 (Rio de
Janeiro, 1985), which was in turn translated as
Photography in Brazil, 1840-1900 (Albuquerque, NM: 1990).
In 1976, Gilberto and Weston Naef co-curated the exhibition
Pioneer Photographers of Brazil at the Center for
Inter-American Relations in New York, and co-authored the accompanying catalog. The exhibition then traveled to the São Paulo
Museum of Modern Art (MAM)
and the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA) in Rio. Subsequent exhibitions for which Gilberto was responsible include his
A
fotografia no Brasil do século XIX: 150 anos do fotógrafo Marc Ferrez 1843/1993
(São Paulo, 1993).
In addition to writing on photography, Gilberto also wrote on the iconography of urban Brazil during the colonial imperial
and early republican
periods, tracing the visual record found in such sources as lithographs, newspapers, maps, watercolors, paintings and photographs.
Beginning in 1951
with studies of Pernambuco State in northeast Brazil, he eventually expanded his iconographical interests to cover most of
the country's urban areas. In
1954, Gilberto mounted two exhibitions,
Iconografia de Petrópolis e seus Arredores and
Iconografia
do Recife, Século XIX
. His
A muito leal e heróica cidade de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro: quatro séculos de expansão
e evolução
(1965), was published for the celebration the four-hundredth anniversary of Rio de Janeiro. Published just a few months after
his
death, Gilberto's two-volume catalog of images,
Iconografia do Rio de Janeiro, 1530-1890: catálogo analítico Rio de
Janeiro
(Casa Jorge Editorial, 2000), can be seen as the culmination of his urban iconography studies.
All told, in addition to his numerous exhibitions, Gilberto wrote around 40 books and articles on the twin areas of Brazilian
urban iconography and
photography. His books devoted to the depiction of Brazil in media other than photography include
O velho Rio de Janeiro através
das gravuras de Thomas Ender
(1957) and
Aquarelas de Richard Bate: O Rio de Janeiro de 1808-1848 (1965). Yet
Gilberto's cultural studies were not confined to the built environment alone. In 1977, he wrote an expertise in support of
the classification of Pão de
Açúar (Sugar Loaf Mountain) as a national asset by the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN). This
prominent natural landmark,
a steep-sided peak rising straight from the water's edge at the mouth of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, and which had figured
significantly in his
grandfather's images of the city, was in danger of being chopped up and pulverized to make granite gravel when Gilberto defended
it.
Gilberto was active in numerous learned and historical societies and councils including the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico
Brasileiro, where he held
the office of treasurer from 1978 to 1981; the Conselho Municipal da Proteção do Patrimônio Cultural do Rio de Janeiro; the
Hispanic Society of America;
and the Instituto de Geografia e História Militar do Brasil. He served as an advisor to the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico
e Artîstico Nacional from
1958 until shortly before his death in 2000. In 1997, he received the Brazilian government's Medalha da ordem do Mérito Cultural.
In 1995, Gilberto and Pedro Vasquez co-curated
Mestres da Fotografia no Brasil: Coleção Gilberto Ferrez, an exhibition
of selections from Gilberto's vast photography collection. Held at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, this was the last
exhibition Gilberto organized.
In 1998 the Instituto Moreira Salles acquired his collection of over 15,000 items, including the complete works of Marc Ferrez
(5,500 prints and over
4,000 glass negatives) as well as significant holdings of other nineteenth-century Brazilian photographers such as Augusto
Stahl, Revert Henry Klumb,
George Leuzinger, Benjamin Mulock, and Augusto Malta.
Gilberto Ferrez died on 23 May 2000, in Rio de Janeiro.
Sources consulted:
Enciclopédia Itaú cultural de artes visuais, s.v. "Gilberto Ferrez,"
http://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/pessoa963/gilberto-ferrez.
"Coleção Gilberto Ferrez," Instituto Moreira Salles, http://ims.com.br/ims/explore/artista/gilberto-ferrez
Adler, Fabio. "Brazil." In
Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-century Photography, ed. John Hannavy. New York: Taylor &
Francis Group, 2008. 205-207.
Muaze, Mariana de Aguiar Ferreira. "Violence Appeased: Slavery and Coffee Raising in the Photography of Marc Ferrez (1882-1885),"
Revista Brasileira de Históvria, vol. 37, no. 74 (January-April, 2017). https://doi.org/10.1590/1806-93472017v37n74-02
Peregrino, Júlia and Pedro Karp Vasquez.
Família Ferrez: Novas revelações. Rio de Janeiro: Centro Cultural Banco do
Brasil, 2008.
Related Archival Materials
The Coleção Gilberto Ferrez at the Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro comprises 15,000 items including the complete
works of Marc Ferrez (5,500
prints and over 4,000 glass negatives) as well as significant holdings of other nineteenth-century Brazilian photographers
such as Augusto Stahl, Revert
Henry Klumb, George Leuzinger, Benjamin Mulock, and Augusto Malta.
The Archivo Família Ferrez, comprising 40,000 family documents, photographs, and other items maintained and expanded by Gilberto
Ferrez, is held at in
the Arquivo Nacional do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro.
Publication Rights
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Sugar Loaf Mountain (Brazil) -- Description and travel
Railroads -- Brazil
Ships -- Brazil
Agriculture -- Brazil
Mines and mineral resources -- Brazil
Petrópolis (Brazil) -- Description and travel
Beaches -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro
Guanabara Bay (Brazil) -- Description and travel
Beaches -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro
Panoramas -- Brazil -- 20th century
Gelatin silver prints -- Brazil -- 19th century
Copy prints -- Brazil -- 20th century
Albumen prints -- Brazil -- 19th century
Gelatin silver prints -- Brazil -- 20th century
Cartes-de-visite (card photographs) -- Brazil -- 19th century
Cabinet photographs -- Brazil -- 19th century
Collotypes (prints) -- Brazil -- 19th century
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) -- Description and travel
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil : State) -- Description and travel
São Paulo (Brazil : State) -- Description and travel
Bahia (Brazil : State) -- Description and travel
Minas Gerais (Brazil) -- Description and travel
Plazas -- Brazil
Urban renewal -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro
Cinelândia (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) -- Description and travel
Motion picture theaters -- Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro
Photographs, Original
Photograph albums -- Brazil -- 19th century
Platinum prints -- Brazil -- 19th century
Platinum prints -- Brazil -- 20th century
Panoramas -- Brazil -- 19th century
Streets -- Brazil
Architecture -- Brazil
Coffee plantations -- Brazil
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil : State) -- Description and travel
Toba Indians
Botocudo Indians
Apiacá Indians
Exposição Nacional do Centenario da Independencia do Brasil (1922 : Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Exposição do Centenario do Brasil (Location of meeting: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Date of
meeting or treaty signing: (1922-1923 :.)
Affonso, J. S.
Ferrari, Carlos
Academia Imperial das Bellas Artes (Brazil)
Henschel, Alberto, 1827-1882
Hees, Pedro, 1841-1880
Riedel, Augusto, 1836-ca. 1877
Azevedo, Militão Augusto de, 1837-1905
Ferrez, Marc, 1843-1923
Büsch, Fritz
Goston, João, d. 1882
Gaensly, Guilherme, 1843-1928
Stahl & Wahnschaffe
Companhia Photographica Brazileira
Estúdio Gaensly & Lindemann
Ferrari & Irmão
Leuzinger, George, 1813-1892
Malta, A., 1864-1957
Klumb, R. H. (Revert Henry)
Liebenau, Guilhermo
Bippus, Carlos