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[First Page] [154], (1) Lines: 0 t ——— 0.17702pt ——— Normal P PgEnds: T [154], (1) Miguel Angel Cuarterolo 9. Images of War Photographers and SketchArtists of theTripleAlliance Conflict TheTriple Alliance, or Paraguayan,War pitted the armies of Paraguay, led by Francisco Solano López, against the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in the longest and bloodiest military confrontation in South American history. It was in many ways a modern war, for the combatants tested new weapons and military innovations imported from abroad. It also saw the introduction to wartime use of a rather recent invention:the camera. This was the first South American conflict to be recorded by photographers, but they have rarely been given their due in the historiography of the war. Photographers not only produced dramatic and sometimes even shocking images of combat’s aftermath but also created works (along with sketch artists) that formed the basis for many of the lithographs that appeared in the illustrated press of Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and European capitals.1 Furthermore,their photographs were key sources for the historical paintings depicting battles and other aspects of the conflict that proliferated in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Photography advanced unevenly in South America during the 1850s and 1860s, from the early use of the daguerreotype to the rapid expansion of photography after the introduction of the wet-collodion process that made possible the popular cartes de visite, or calling cards. But the war provided numerous new opportunities for photographers, and an enterprising team from the Montevideo gallery of Bate & Co. set out to photograph the allied armies in 1866,hoping to sell the images to a Platine public hungry for news from the front. Sketch artists too were present at the front by this time, as were painters. These men’s works were widely reproduced (though often uncredited) in illustrated newspapers. Tracing the connections among these different art forms reveals the processes by which these“soldiers in the service of memory” shaped the images of the war held by contemporaries and by modern historians. Secure the Shadow: Photography in the 1850s and 1860s Although twenty years had elapsed since the introduction of the daguerreotype to South America, photography was still an uncertain enterprise in the region during the 1860s. A French clergyman, Louis Compte, gave the Miguel Angel Cuarterolo 155 [155], (2) Lines: 50 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [155], (2) first demonstrations of the daguerreotype in Buenos Aires, just five months after the process was presented to the Academy of Science in Paris in 1839.2 Compte’s exposition was little more than a scientific curiosity, though it earned him great publicity in the newspapers of that time. Instead the definitive introduction of Daguerre’s invention to the continent fell to a handful of itinerant North American and French daguerreotypists who came to Latin America in search of new markets.They traveled from town to town,setting up temporary galleries and advertising their services in local newspapers. At the height of the daguerreotype period in the 1850s,photography was an expensive and solemn ritual usually restricted to the studio. Formal studio portraits made up more than 95 percent of the images produced during that time and were thus the photographer’s main source of income. Outdoor views were exceedingly rare, and most of those were static views of streets or unpeopled landscapes. The daguerreotype process had its disadvantages: it was costly, and each picture constituted a unique, nonreproducible image. Only members of the bourgeoisie could afford it. Politicians, merchants, military officers, members of the clergy, and rich ranchers and their families composed the photographers’ clientele, but few others found their way into the studios. During this era technological limitations made it impossible to capture action. Few photographers ventured to record current events or newsworthy scenes.The daguerreotypes of the U.S.–MexicoWar (1846–48) or the siege of Rome (1849), however, are pioneering examples of documentary photography .These and other instances proved photography’s utility as a documentary tool, and the public came to view the camera as a faithful witness. Frederick S.Archer developed the wet-collodion process in 1851,thereby overcoming the limitations of earlier photographic methods.3 It was a positive-negative process that permitted the multiple duplication of photographs , printed on salt- or albumen-treated paper. Despite the complex manipulations involved, the collodion negative could record fine detail and subtle tones, and it was much more light sensitive, making it...

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