Bearded gentleman. Buenos Aires. Circa 1864.

Vintage carte-de-visite on albumen paper, measuring 9 x 5.8 cm / 3.54 x 2.28 in, mounted on a secondary 10.4 x 6.3 cm / 4.09 x 2.48 in white cardboard support. At the bottom of it and lithographically printed in blue ink: “Bo. Panunzi. Photo ”and on the back, in the same ink and between ornaments, the advertising of the studio: “Artistic Photography of Benito Panunzi ”located on Cuyo Street - current Sarmiento - N ° 55 of Buenos Aires. And below, an extensive promotional legend of that place: “Portraits are taken and artistic works are made of Photography and oil of all sizes and of all kinds, Views and paintings of customs of the country are sold, views of Houses are taken, Quintas, Estancias and portraits at home”. (In bold in the original)

At the beginning of this popular French format in Buenos Aires, we appreciate a young gentleman in a half-bust portrait where his figure stands out thanks to his blurred edges, in a difficult artistic work of the photographic house. The carte-de-visite technique carried out through wet collodion negatives and which finally delivered to each client a dozen copies on albumen paper, facilitated the development of the photographic industry, since by lowering its costs it allowed the development of a novel collecting, as it was to gather these business cards in the brand-new albums bringing together family, friends and even public and historical figures who presided over the collection.

Benito Panunzi (1819-1894), Italian by origin, began his photographic activity in Buenos Aires in the 1860s with a studio on Calle Cuyo number 55/57, where he performed under the business name "Artistic Photography". Little is known about his life prior to his arrival in Argentina, where he worked as a photographer, draftsman and architect, although it is understood from the quality of his work that Panunzi arrived in the country provided with such knowledge. Together with the French Esteban Gonnet, he was one of the first photographers to edit albums of views in Argentina, and in his honor, the Photo Library of the National Library of Argentina is named after him.

For its early urban and rural views -including the first Indians and gauchos- and the truly superior quality of his technique, the work of the Italian Benito Panunzi was highlighted by all the Argentine photographic researchers. However, in comparison with his colleagues from the capital, his posed studio portraits in "carte-de-visite" are really scarce, which is why they charge a high value when a new piece by the authorship of he.

By Abel Alexander

President of the Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography.