Piedade Grinberg
The Moinho Fluminense mill seen through the lenses of leading photographers in Rio de Janeiro
Brazil has rarely been so attractive to geographers, naturalists, botanists, and all kinds of travelers as it seemed during the years immediately after the arrival of King John VI of Portugal and his Court, fleeing Napoleon’s invading armies. This was quickly followed by opening up Brazil’s ports, with restrictions lifted in 1808.
The arrival of this new society in Rio de Janeiro (and other large towns in Brazil) is quite clear during the early XIX century. Its influence is reflected in the memoirs, narratives and iconography of countless travelers (paintings, drawings, engravings, outlines, studies and sketches), printed matter (like newspaper advertisements or police records), furniture, clothing, decorative items, coins etc.
In parallel to the French Artistic Mission (1816), philosophical journeys and scientific expeditions bought European scientists and artists to Brazil. In an unparalleled upsurge of narratives and pictures, names such as Martius and Spix, Langsdorff and Johann Moritz Rugendas, Thomas Ender, Planitz, Jean-Baptiste Debret, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay and many others portrayed daily life in the city and its surroundings. This naturally included new commercial aspects of this tropical capital. Among many others, painters, photographers, merchants (like John Luccock, Richard Bate, Joseph Tully, Richard Orseley, James Henderson and Henry Chamberlain) and even a governess (Maria Graham) left a rich legacy of writings and illustrations of the city where they lived, even if temporarily.
Often amateur artists working in a wide variety of jobs, these travelers and scientists contributed to an aware and public affirmation of Brazil’s status as a nation, helping unveil a new world that was recorded with fascination and wonder, but always with meticulous care and detailed observation.
These foreigners brought innovative skills, crafts and customs with them, ushering in a new cosmopolitan phase that transformed the city’s trade by introducing new needs, habits, users and practices into its daily life. The presence of these new residents resonated through its urban framework, reflected in the architecture of its homes and the layouts of their rooms; it echoed through fashions and thought, with imported customs and habits changing the ways that people ate and dressed.
Photographs are vital sources of information on the history of the city, with precious insights for anyone eager to explore nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. These delicate and precise compositions form a lovely legacy left by these sensitive and talented photographers.
Rated as less important in the pictorial tradition, landscapes proved their worth in photography, becoming a crucial element in the main subjects addressed by these realistic pictures. Using highly-skilled techniques, they were produced as illustrations for maps, albums, travel guides, postcards, advertisements, calendars and other printwork, specifically portraying the metropolis and its many different aspects – different, unusual, unknown and even outrageous – while also disseminating information of general interest.
The pictures begin with the impact of arriving at the mouth of the Guanabara Bay, following the sea route to the city: crossing the bar, the bay, the port, the rugged silhouette of its mountainous skyline, urban reforms and upgrades, set against lush landscapes framing the bay.
Other pictures were grouped into small collections, often known as picturesque or panoramic albums portraying the iconic capital of the tropics. Spreading its fame as one of the world’s loveliest cities, this was how it earned its sobriquet of the Cidade Maravilhosa – the Marvellous City.
In this work, the photographer chose angles and selected aspects of the landscape, building up a set of images that often turned into monuments representing the city, its residents and their customs.
Still today, it is not hard to see the extent to which these choices still remain symbols of the city, standing tall in our emotional memory of the Rio landscape as the places that identify us, and in which we recognize ourselves: beaches and shorelines, hills, skylines, buildings and demolitions, providing important details and creating an accurate document that forms a faithful historical record of these urban transformations.
