San Fernando. Province of Buenos Aires. Circa 1867.

Vintage photography in business card or "Carte-de-visite" format. Albumen paper. Sepia tone. Secondary support: White cardboard, with legends on the back. One handwritten, in Italian, “Piazza della Vittoria a Buenos Aires e arco di” – in Spanish: Plaza de la Victoria Buenos Aires and Arco de la Victoria – and the other, lithographic, with the commercial advertising: “Florida Photography / Florida 80 / Buenos Aires”.

Measures. Photograph: 5.5 x 9 cm. Support: 6.3 x 10.2 cm. Former César Gotta collection.

The image shows us the river activity with boats of different characteristics, which transported goods coming from the Delta islands and nearby areas. Here, unloaded, it was transported by land and also through the Northern Railway, inaugurated in 1864. The buildings, on stilts, are equipped to face the flooding of the watercourse. To the left, a footbridge that crosses over the canal, and on the opposite bank, a dirt road where horse-drawn vehicles moved.

The photographic house, identified with its address in this city -Florida 80- on an emblematic street of the same, was the headquarters of several studios, among them that of the North American Artur Terry, who set up shop there in 1861. The information currently available indicates that, around 1864, Terry sold it to Fufs Gastari; probably the one responsible for the set presented here. (1)

Note: 1. Fernando San Martín: I Biographical Dictionary of Photographers in Argentina. Gráfica Laiglon, Quilmes, 2023, pp. 237 and 369.

Abel Alexander

President of the Ibero-American Society of History of Photography