| Don’t look for a parody of the John Huston film—here, the silver eye belongs to a young woman, her portrait taken as a daguerreotype. The reflection you see is that of a solid silver chamber pot—stolen silver, once sacred to Amerindian divinities.
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At the Entrance: The Silver Chamber Pot reflects in a daguerreotype COLOMBIA – “THE PRODIGIOUS RENEWAL OF THE IMAGE” II. REFLECTION IN A SILVER EYE At the entrance of the Colombian Exhibition stands a solid silver chamber pot for a child, once offered to Rufino Cuervo y Barreto (1801–1853). Both utilitarian and symbolic, this vessel prompts a quiet meditation on Colombia’s colonial past and the curious fate of precious metals transformed into objects of daily life.
Unfortunately, this scenario is more poetic than factual: there is no evidence of solid silver domestic wares from this region of Colombia. Still, the fantasy lingers. What is certain is that silver was a primary motive for the conquest and later administration of the Americas. In Colonial time of New-Grenada, extraordinary amounts of silver were extracted as early as the 16th century, especially from the Santa Ana and Frias mines in the Mariquita District of Tolima—recognized as the country’s richest primary silver district, with mining records dating back to at least 1585. These mines supplied both the colonial economy and the luxury goods of the elite. Rufino Cuervo y Barreto became a prominent Colombian jurist, politician, and diplomat of the 19th century. Educated in Bogotá, he married a young person from the family of the last Viceroy and served after the independance as governor of Cundinamarca, rector of the Central University, vice president, and briefly as president of the Republic in 1847. He was an active intellectual, a journalist, and a defender of liberal ideas, and is remembered as the father of the philologist Rufino José Cuervo. According to family tradition, the chamber pot was a gift from the last Viceroy of New Granada, Sámano y Urisarri, to the young couple waiting a child. It thus stands as a small but telling symbol of colonial wealth and its passage into the hands of the emerging Colombian elite.
Next to the chamber pot is a daguerreotype of a young Colombian woman. Like the pot, the daguerreotype is an object of silver—its image fixed on a polished plate—linking the material’s colonial past to the beginnings of modern photography. The daguerreotype process, invented in France in 1839, spread rapidly to the Americas.
Julien Petit explaining:
In addition to his official duties, the diplomat introduced the practice of daguerreotype photography to the country, building the first camera himself and likely using his position to facilitate the importation of the techniques and materials necessary for photosensitive recording on metal, notably with the help of Charles Chevalier. During his four years in the young Republic of New Granada, as present-day Colombia was then called, Gros perfected his daguerreotype technique, certainly training—as legend has it—the first Colombian operators, such as the painter Luis García Hevia. The few known prints made by the baron during his stay in Colombia—a view from Observatory Street and a panorama of Bogotá Cathedral—attest to his perfect mastery of the daguerreotype process. Other images, unknown until today but described by observers, nevertheless seem to have been produced during this period. Baron Gros thus embodies a unique figure in the history of art in Colombia. As the country’s first daguerreotypist, he nevertheless stood out from other foreign photographers, notably through his involvement in Colombian cultural life and his contribution to landscape photography, which predated that of traveling painters such as Edward Walhouse Mark and Frederic Edwin Church. In this sense, his visit was one of the defining moments in the birth of a modern visual culture in Colombia, which shaped its identity.” (Julien Petit)
During his stay in Bogota, Baron Gros reinvented the daguerreotype process in ways that would later impress his French contemporaries. Later, Gros was appointed Ambassador to London (1852–1863), a post that allowed him to travel widely, including visits to China and Japan in 1857 and 1858. He participated as an ambassador during the Anglo-French military agressive expedition to China (1856–1860). On 9 October 1858, Gros was a signatory to the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between France and Japan at Edo, an agreement that established formal diplomatic relations between the two countries. Upon his final return to France, following multiple diplomatic missions, he was elected president of the Société Française de Photographie.
The exhibition at Visionaria (via Marchetti, behind Palazzo del Duca) is open throughout the month of July. Let’s conclude with a special card created for the Misteri della Fotografia series ! MYT-3 Narcissus. Boeotia – 5th century BC (story by Ovid, under the consulate of Marcus Furius Camillus and Sextus Nonius Quintilianus, year 8 AD) Narcissus, a young man of extraordinary beauty, bends over a pool of water (here iced suface similar to a silver mirror) and falls in love with his own reflection. Enchanted by that unattainable image, he can no longer look away. He dies, consumed by desire. The most famous version is in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but there are earlier Greek tales, particularly by Pausanias, Conon, and Parthenius. Heliochromy published as a postcard, mixed media on a digital base: collage, engraving, gouache retouching, and manual interventions.
Narciso, giovane di bellezza straordinaria, si china su uno specchio d’acqua e s’innamora del proprio riflesso. Incantato da quell’immagine irraggiungibile, non riesce più a distogliere lo sguardo. Muore, consumato dal desiderio. La versione più celebre è nelle Metamorfosi di Ovidio, ma esistono racconti greci anteriori, in particolare presso Pausania, Conone e Partenio. Eliocromia pubblicata come cartolina, procedimento misto su base digitale: collage, incisione, ritocco a gouache e interventi manuali, e fa parte della prima serie I Misteri della Fotografia, dedicata ai miti ed ai precursori Edizioni Atelier 41, via Fratelli Bandiera, Senigallia La Fotografia è la più bella delle collezioni … Senigallia, città della fotografia, ospitera nuovi spazi dedicato alla ricerca e promozione della fotografia. Atelier 41 si trova 41 via fratelli Bandiera. Senigallia diventerà la Città delle collezioni. Any question : fotografia
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