Studio portraits of a husband and wife. Concepción, Chile, circa 1870.

Two albumen print photographs in carte de visite format, 105 x 63 mm (mounts); versos with the pictorial back mark of ‘E. Garreaud y cía, sucursal del sur‘ [i.e. “southern branch” = Concepción, see below]; the woman’s portrait has a dedicatory inscription in pencil by the sitter on the verso: ‘A mi querida amiga Elena, de su sincera amiga Aurora‘; both cartes are in fine condition.

‘En Concepción algunos destacados fueron: Juan de la Cruz Palomino, en la Calle del Comercio, la sucursal del sur de Emilio Garreaud y Compañía, además de los fotógrafos Carvajal y Valck, entre otros‘ = ‘In Concepción some notable [studios] were: Juan de la Cruz Palomino, on Calle del Comercio, the southern branch of Emilio Garreaud y Compañía, in addition to the photographers Carvajal y Valck, among others’. (Ilonka Csillag Pimstein, Conservación de fotografía patrimonial, Santiago de Chile : Centro Nacional del Patrimonio Fotográfico, 2000, p. 31)

‘In 1852 Emile Garreaud set up his first photographic studio in the Americas, in Lima, the capital of Peru. There he was one of the pioneers of studio paper portraits in carte de visite format, as well as of the elegant photographic salon, with curtains and decorations.

He arrived in Chile around 1865 and opened his first gallery in Santiago, where he took portraits of elite figures such as Guillermo Matta, Cornelio Saavedra and Aníbal Zañartu.

He opened his studio in Valparaíso in 1869 and expanded his business through branches in Copiapó, La Serena, Talca and Concepción. By 1870, Garreaud y Cía. had become a company of national renown.

Soon after this, he abandoned portrait photography to dedicate himself to the mass reproduction of Chilean views and landscapes. For example, in collaboration with the Rowsell y Courret studio, he published the album Vistas de la Patagonia, del Estrecho y de la Tierra del Fuego, which brought together 22 photographs bound by the Mercurio de Valparaíso.

In 1872 the government endorsed his project to create albums of views of Chile with panoramic landscapes and the principal buildings of Valparaíso and Santiago. The 1874 publication known as the Santa Lucía album, which contained 49 large-format photographs and a text written by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, was the standout of this genre.’ (Biblioteca Santiago Severin, Valparaiso – our translation)