Regarding the celebration on August 19 of World Photography Day.
From the origins to the proclamation of the Republic of Cuba.
On January 7, 1839, Louis Jaques Mandé Daguerre's (1789-1851) procedure for fixing images was presented to the French Academy of Sciences. Less than three months later, the news reached Cuba, and on the front page of the Diario de La Habana on March 28, under the title "Fixing the images in the camera obscura," the full text of the article published in the Gazette de France by H. Gaucheraud, with the description of the discovery.
A few months later, once the patent on the invention was acquired, and recognizing its importance and scope, the French government decided to offer it free to everyone, on August 19, 1839 and it is in greeting to that date that it is celebrated the International Day of Photography.
On April 5, 1840, the newspaper Noticioso y Lucero de La Habana reported the introduction of the first device, based on the designs of Niepce and Daguerre:
Considering the backwardness of the fine arts on the Island of Cuba, far from the center of invention and scientific movement, we did not expect that this discovery would really penetrate us so soon. Fortunately we were wrong. His Excellency Pedro Téllez Girón, son of our worthy Captain General, an enlightened young man, an enthusiastic connoisseur of useful inventions, he had a Daguerreotype come from Paris.
The curious apparatus arrived in this capital in poor condition, useless; stained foil, broken reagent bottles, and thermometer. For the time being, this fatal setback was believed irreparable, but he was constant in his zeal, firm in his decision, and requested and obtained from Don Luis Casaseca the repair of the instrument.
The illustrious young man immediately had the pleasure of seeing his first application test crowned by a very happy success by copying through the Daguerreotype the view of a part of the Plaza de Armas, which represents the Intendencia building, part of the Force barracks, some trees in the center of the same square and finally the hill that to the eastern of the bay contributes to form the port of Havana, all with a perfection in the details that is truly admirable.
Although the author of the first "Cuban" daguerreotype had already left that somewhat complicated "toy", others calculated its commercial potential very well: between May and November 1840 in the Diario de La Habana it was announced that the El Buen Gusto store in Paris offers “… daguerreotypes of various sizes and prices” and “… a daguerreotype machine and loose plates for id…”; A succinct explanation of the novelty is also given: «… a kind of camera obscura invented by Mr. Daguerre which, by means of the reflection of light, paints the objects by themselves…».
While this was happening, in December 1840 he returned to Havana, equipped with a brand new mirror camera by Alexander Wolcott and the chemical process of John William Draper, the American George Washington Halsey, who had lived in the city for three years, working as a teacher. calligraphy and drawing. Along with equipping him, Halsey brought the experiences of working in various North American cities and the verification, in situ, of the instant success of the daguerreotype miniatures in New York. Knowing the terrain he walked on, he did not lose sight of the enormous possibilities of portraiture in the rich Havana society.
The clever North American received permission to announce the benefits of his machine based on the landscape and the portrait, and on January 3, 1841, on the roof of the Royal College of Useful Knowledge, on Calle Obispo 26, today the site of the Ambos Mundos hotel, Halsey's studio opened its doors, which made Cuba the second country in the world (after the United States) to have this type of commercial establishment. The portrait artist places great value on advertising: he inserts three different advertisements, in less than two months, in the Noticioso and Lucero in Havana.
For several years, amid significant advances in equipment, recording media and their processing, "photographers" are dedicated to portraying, firstly, Havanans and, later, with the emergence of studios in the main cities of the country, to anyone who had the resources to do so ... and the stoicism to withstand the immobilization of the head for several minutes, many times in direct sunlight, which was, for several years, the object of ridicule in satirical newspapers such as Don Junípero and El Moro Muza.
The first portraits that were commercialized were daguerreotypes, in beautiful cases of the most varied designs to protect them. In the 1950s, images already printed on paper were shown in albums and in the then very famous cartes-de-visite, patented in Paris by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri. Years later, processes improved and formats grew.
In the first half of that same decade, the daguerreotype was replaced by wet colloidon plates; This made it possible to obtain a negative with which it was possible to make reproductions on paper. Around the same time, various procedures such as ambrotype, tintype, charcoal photography and albumen were introduced in Cuba with varied success.
In 1855, the first article referring to photography appeared in the Revista de la Habana, with a dedication "to the photographers of Havana." Its author, José de Jesús Quintiliano García y Valdés, makes a well-documented summary of the emergence of photography and shows the enormous possibilities that this new means of recording images already offered, in spheres as varied as Natural History, reproduction of works of art, Archeology, Astronomy, Geology, the identification of the convicts, the sale of lots and other purposes. And he concludes: «Illustrating a newspaper with photographic engravings, publishing vignettes drawn and engraved by the Sun ... sixty years ago this was ridiculous madness; ten years ago a dream; yesterday a hope; today a reality! ».
According to the 1859 Havana Yearbook and Directory, there were fifteen very luxurious galleries in the commercial and central streets of Obispo and O'Reilly. Among the names of the portraitists to the daguerreotype stand out that of Encarnación Iróstegui (or Irástegui), the first Cuban photographer; Esteban Mestre, author of photographs of important life events in the capital, including the first known photograph of José Martí, taken in 1862, and of buildings, streets and walkways, and Charles DeForest Fredricks (1823-1894), who bequeathed us beautiful images of Havana.
Fredricks, in addition to being an excellent artist, was a visionary of the photographic business; After traveling with his camera along the coasts of South America between 1844 and 1853, he established his headquarters in New York, with subsidiaries in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba, here in 1857 under the name CD Fredricks y Daries, on the street Havana Cohner, an exquisite portrait painter of the capital's high society, had the misfortune of being hit by the bullets of the Volunteers while he was in a Havana cafe in January 1869, the day of the events of the Villanueva Theater, when those attending the evening they were repressed by the Spaniards, with the balance of three dead and numerous wounded.
Already in 1860, the North American painter and photographer Osbert Burr Loomis made the first photographic panorama of the city, consisting of a series of eight images united in a continuous album of 25.5 x 239.5 cm, dedicated to Mr. Francisco Serrano and Domínguez, Count of Santa Clara and registered in the archives of the southern district of New York, where it was printed. About this work the Diario de La Habana wrote:
We have had the opportunity to see the magnificent photographic panorama of Havana and its surroundings recently taken by the daguerreotype artist Loomis of this city and that in our opinion must be considered one of the most perfect works of its kind. Anyone who wants to study the position of the capital of Cuba, without missing even the most insignificant detail in it or in its surroundings, only has to consult the panorama to which we refer, where everything is marked with the greatest clarity and accuracy. The beautiful work of Mr. Loomis is nothing more than the faithful reproduction of nature, with this we believe we have said it all. As we understand it, the author of the panorama intends to open a subscription, if he has not already done so, in order to cover not only the expenses caused by the work, but also the multiplication of the originals that is proposed must be originated get. In this way, for very little money you can make your purchase.
As a demonstration of the importance that photography had gained by then (1860), the weekly literary-critical newspaper La Charanga decided to change the vignette of the butt, to include a photographer in it.
The Sunday newspaper Don Junípero, directed by Landaluze, in its edition of Sunday January 25, 1863 publishes a note to recommend the work of three Havana photographic studios, firstly, that of Fredricks, of which the work of the artist Herlitz stands out in lighting pictures:
"A photograph painted by Herlitz is, in addition to an exact portrait, a work of art that deserves to appear in the forefront of the cabinet of the most scrupulous fan of painting."
Already around this time several photographers, with their heavy equipment on their backs, venture to take pictures far from their studios, showing a city in full growth and pictures of our fields.
On August 8, 1863, the official act was held to begin the demolition of the walls of Havana. Don Junípero publishes a beautiful engraving and Esteban Mestre manages, once the act is over, that the retinue, chaired by the Captain General of the Island, Domingo Dulce Garay, pose for his camera. The newspaper La Prensa reports this:
The ceremony was over.
The entire gathering was greeted and began to descend the very wide staircase, always carrying the Bishop to his right and the General of the Navy to his left, and around him the Town Hall, General Officers, Great crosses, titles of Castile and distinguished persons. , resounding the military music with the Royal March, at the sight of S.E.
In this order, the entire procession halted in the middle of the grand staircase, all remaining there for ten minutes, the time necessary for a photographer, standing with his apparatus on a balcony on O'Reylli Street, on the corner of the square, take out that imposing sight, to send it to Madrid and so that the people of Havana can possess it.
Two days later, upon receiving a printed copy of the image, the newspaper itself publishes what is probably the first journalistic criticism of a photographic work: «The sight is exact, beautiful and imposing, being to feel that the portraits do not have come out clearer, at least on the card that we have in view. It was known that this photographic view was going to be taken, the brilliant audience invited to the ceremony could be placed in another way on the great staircase, for greater ostentation ».
The Ten Years' War initiated by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes on October 10, 1868, reduced the commercial activity of photography in Cuba. Of these years little has been preserved: Historical Photographic Album of the Cuban War, from its beginning until the Reign of Amadeo I, dedicated to the worthy corps of the Army, Navy and Volunteers of the Island (La Habana, Impr. La Antilla de Cacho-Negrete, 1872), with text by Gil Gelpí y Ferro accompanied by 24 images by the Galician photographer Leopoldo Varela y Solís, and the Album la paz de Cuba. Occurrences of the Cuban campaign during the peace treaty (La Habana, Impr. La Propaganda Literaria, 1878), with 17 photographs of Elías Ibáñez, who traveled through the Mambi camps in the East in the days prior to the Pact of Zanjón.
The years after the conflict brought a new air to photography. In 1881 the Photogravure Workshop was created, the first of its kind in Cuba, established by Francisco Alfredo Pereira and Taveira, where the processes of collotype and photolithography are progressively introduced and, in addition to producing Landaluze's illustrations for Types and Customs of the Island of Cuba, photoengravings were then made for the magazines La Habana Elegant and El Fígaro.
In January 1882 the initial number of the Photographic Bulletin was published, the first specialized publication in Latin America. The first Cuban films with emulsions prepared for our conditions of heat and humidity begin to be produced, under the commercial name of Dry Plates of Brominated Gelatin, Tropical Cubana.
A year later, in April 1883, 23 photographers joined the Cuban Amateur Photographic Association, known in 1884 as the Havana Photographic Association.
Registration was by invitation and was extended to distinguished persons in the progress of photography. Robert M. Levine, in his work on Fredricks, mentions a Photographic Society Cuban as early as 1857.
After the success achieved with the use of collotype in the book Types and customs of the island of Cuba, Taveira continued with his research to improve the procedure and use it in the illustration of periodical publications. On February 4, 1883, in the magazine El Museo, the first reproduction by photolithographic means appeared in a publication of this type: the portrait of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda by Taveira; A few days later, on March 25, in the portrait of the lawyer Nicolás Azcárate, the halftone is used for the first time.
From this technological advance, photography gradually began to replace engraving, until it reached publications entirely illustrated with images captured by the camera, such as La Caricatura, La Discusión, El Fígaro, La Ilustracion Cubana, La Habana Elegant, El Hogar. , Cuba y América (carried out by Cubans in New York and later in Havana, in both cases under the direction of Raimundo Cabrera), among other publications, now more attractive to the eye.
Then the need arises for photographers dedicated to this activity, some of them exclusively for these media. Among them are Rafael Blanco Santa Coloma (1867-1929), Juan F. Steegers (1855-1921), Gilbert, Martínez, Antonio Desquirón (? -1918), Quiñones and José Gómez de la Carrera (? -1908), who like A war correspondent visited both the Spanish and the Mambises camps and illustrated for Spanish and North American newspapers the war that began in Cuba in 1895.
Several Cuban photographers go into exile, among them Andrés I. Estévez, who established in Key West records in 1891 a beautiful portrait of José Martí and another of the Organizing Committee of Cuban patriots of that city, and the patriot and photographer Juan Bautista Valdés, that he took in 1892, in Jamaica, one of the best images of the Apostle. Martí dedicates one of the copies to him:
To a son of himself, an example and honor of his homeland; to a fine and conscientious artist, the brotherly friend Juan Bautista Valdés, from
his Jose Marti.
From this stage are the dramatic graphic testimonies of the photographers Pedro J. Pérez, Joaquín López de Quintana (1869-1935), Gregorio Casañas (? -1907) and others, on the reconcentration decreed in 1896 by Captain General Valeriano Weyler to cut peasant support for the mambises.
An event that would change the course of the War of Independence, the explosion of the American battleship USS Maine in Havana Bay on February 15, 1898, used as a pretext for the intervention of the northern army, was captured by Gómez de la Carrera, who also He was appointed official photographer of the investigation commission of the sinking. Spanish army officer Pedro de Barrionuevo takes pictures of the tragedy hours after the event.
On April 21, 1898, the United States declared war on Spain; a naval blockade is carried out on the main ports, some of which are bombed; The Spanish squadron is destroyed, under the command of Commander Pascual Cervera, who, by order of the island's captain general, Ramón Blanco y Erenas, tries to leave the port of Santiago de Cuba, and the landing of North American troops in the vicinity begins of that city.
The situation was exploited by the American press mogul William Randolf Hearst, who sent a total of 89 photojournalists to the theater of operations.
With the war practically won by the independentistas, the North American government forced the Spanish to sign the Treaty of Paris, without the presence of the Cubans, and occupied the island. On January 1, 1899, at the Castle of the Three Reyes del Morro, in the presence of the Spanish General Adolfo Jiménez Castellanos and the Comptroller General John R. Brooks, the Spanish flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes raised, moments captured by several photographers, including the ubiquitous Gómez de la Carrera .
In the three years that the first US intervention lasted, numerous photographers, Cubans and foreigners, dedicated themselves to recreating the most picturesque places in the city and the social events that took place.
With the mambí army disarmed, the Platt Amendment imposed by the Americans, which restricted the freedom of the nation, and a president, Mr. Tomás Estrada Palma, who defended the interests of the northern neighbor, on May 20, 1902, the Republic of Cuba was proclaimed. symbolically represented with the raising of our flag in El Morro and in the Palace of the General Captains. The Generalissimo Máximo Gómez attended this last place and the moment was captured by the omnipresent Gómez de la Carrera. At El Morro, as a premonition, the Cuban flag became entangled with one of the strings, which was recorded by the photographer Adolfo Roqueñí (? -1964).
It was the beginning of a new stage, full of contradictions, advances and setbacks, consolidation of national identity and the opening of enormous creative possibilities for the country's thriving photographic movement, which will acquire its own characteristics and will begin to be known outside its borders. like Cuban Photography.
To be continue…
Note: the basis of this work is the book “La Habana. Image of a colonial city, by the authors Zoila Lapique and Julio Larramendi. Polymita Editions, 2013. The images belong to the collections of the José Martí National Library, the National Archive of Cuba, the Photo Library of the Office of the Historian of Havana, the Photo Library of Havana and private collections.