Second and final installment
By way of introduction
This work can be referred to the famous popular phrase «No deadline that is not met, nor debt that is not paid» because, around January 1983, we acquired in Buenos Aires the book «Focust East - Early Photography in the Near East [1839-1885]» by the notable Israeli photo historian Nissan N. Perez [1947] and in which we found, with surprise, the name of the photographer Schier, a German surname that coincides with a professional working in Buenos Aires around the 1870s and of whom we even had a small collection of six carte-de-visite. Thirty-two years later we have paid the debt and we present for your consideration this second installment of an exciting history of early international photography that unites three continents through its images.
Research on the history of Argentine photography in its early days invariably refers us to the almost monopolistic performance of a small group of professionals from Europe and the United States. That shocking invention of the daguerreotype, which had worldwide repercussions, finally arrived in Buenos Aires in mid-1843, thanks to the American daguerreotypist John Elliot, who published his mysterious services in the Buenos Aires press.
At that time, the profile of those precursors had several points in common; they were mostly young adventurers willing to travel the world commercially exploiting the invention of the Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre [1787-1851] through unprecedented portrait studios.
They crossed the vast Atlantic in fragile ships to reach the Río de la Plata without knowing the Spanish language, and then they had to operate professionally and socially in a complex South American society different from that of their origins. French, American, English, German, Italian and Austrian people formed the largest group and promoted themselves among their local compatriots, appealing to their distant homelands with symbols, coats of arms or the names of capital cities.
As a descendant of the German daguerreotypist Adolfo Alexander [1822, Hamburg - 1881, Buenos Aires], the early German-speaking artists active in our country caught my attention. In addition to the many investigations on Alexander himself, we have published a specific essay entitled "German Daguerreotypists and Ambrotypists in Argentina" in the magazine Todo es Historia and several biographies on the camera professionals Georg Sulszman, Godofredo Kaltschmidt, Herbert Kirchhoff and Carlos and Fernando Weiss.
Now we face the second and last part of the work on the Austrian photographer Antoine Schier; Let us remember that the first chapter was published in issue 42 of this newsletter, in October 2024, and where he developed his activity in the city of Buenos Aires, first associated with his compatriot Leithner in the «Photographie de Vienne» and then as the sole owner of that photographic studio during the 1870s.
Austrian photography
Everything indicates that A. Schier's photographic beginnings took place in Austria, whose capital Vienna was then the seat of the powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire [1867-1918], ruled by Emperor Franz Joseph 1° [1830 - 1916], whose reign over 53 million subjects lasted almost 68 years, one of the longest of the European monarchies.
It is also interesting to note the early background on photography in Austria. The 1,200 kilometres between Paris and Vienna allowed the iconographic novelty generated by Monsieur Daguerre to be adopted very soon by a monarchy eager to perpetuate itself through those magical mirrored portraits.
Austrian high technology was immediately added to the manufacture of key inputs. For example, the old Voitgländer firm - created in 1756 by Johann Cristoph - contributed the first photographic lens based on analytical calculations; these lenses were designed by the Hungarian-German mathematician Jósef Maximilian Petzval [1807-1891], reducing exposure times from 20-30 minutes to just 1-2 minutes and thus opening the doors to the formidable business of studio portraiture. In 1849, Voitgtländer introduced the world's first all-metal daguerreotype camera, and by 1868 the company had manufactured more than 10,000 lenses for various photographic equipment.
The Vienna Photographic Society - "Photographische Gesellschaft" in German - was founded in Vienna on 22 March 1861, modelled on similar prestigious organisations in London and Paris. It brought together enthusiastic amateurs who, through exhibitions and publications - such as the magazine "Photographische Correspondenz" (1864), carried out an excellent dissemination of the new art in the world of culture. The photographic library of the organisation came to contain a considerable number of technical and artistic manuals available to its members. Between May and June 1864, the first exhibition was held, with more than 1,100 works appreciated by 10,000 visitors.
The powerful Austro-Hungarian monarchy and nobility were not oblivious to the photographic phenomenon, and its principal members became the privileged clients of these daguerreotype and photography studios. At the same time, valuable photographic collections were created in certain royal houses, for example, the one preserved today in the National Library of Vienna, which houses two million works from the 19th and 20th centuries.
It was in the scientific, technical and artistic context of Imperial Vienna in the 1860s that the young A. Schier began his career in the fascinating world of professional photography, and of course, his specialty was the difficult studio portraiture. We must point out that at that time the posed portrait was the great commercial outlet for the vast majority of the new professionals.
Like all his colleagues, A. Schier devoted himself to the commercial exploitation of the novel portraits in the format of visiting cards - or "carte-de-visite" in French - small rectangles of 6 x 9 cm, using wet collodion glass negatives and contact copies on albumin paper. The process and the four-lens camera were the work of the Frenchman André Adolphe Eugéne Disdéri [Nice, 1819-1889] and allowed clients to obtain 12 portraits in different poses.
But as for so many precursors, the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire proved too small to satisfy their thirst for adventure and fortune. The mysterious universe of the Middle East with its exotic customs and ancient civilizations proved an irresistible magnet for these image hunters.
A camera in the land of the pharaohs
Since Napoleon Bonaparte's great military campaign [between 1798 and 1801] against the kingdom of Egypt and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone - which allowed the decipherment of its hieroglyphics 1,400 years later - Europe had turned its attention to the ancient culture of the pharaohs; this phenomenon was not alien to early photography, which embarked on a fever of visual documentation.
Pioneering photographers such as the French daguerreotypist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey or photographers of the stature of Francis Frith, Felice Beato, James Robertson, Hammerschmidt, J. Pascal Sébah and Abdullah Freres, among others, focused their travel cameras to capture previously unseen views of those monumental ruins, immutable witnesses of a superior civilization.
From Paris to the port of Alexandria there are around 3,100 kilometers, a distance that our traveler had to cover by land and sea in search of better job opportunities. In this city - the second most important in Egypt - founded by the conqueror Alexander the Great in 331 BC, Schier settled for about a decade practicing the novel art of photography. As far as we know, Egypt was the first international destination for this restless visual pilgrim; an experience that forever marked his professional "modus operandi."
At that time Egypt was under the political and economic influence of the French and the English, two powers interested in this vast and strategic domain with more than 1,000,000 km2 and 6 million inhabitants. In this sociopolitical context, photography played an important role, precisely because of the veracity of its images through urban, rural, archaeological views and even popular types and customs. Forty years after the invention, such records generated great interest in the European continent and other regions of the world. Even journalism, through newspapers and magazines, echoed this phenomenon by reproducing these images in lithographs and other mechanical techniques.
The Schier & Schoefft company
Unlike the traveling photographers who fleetingly documented mid-19th century Egypt, the Austrian A. Schier made the decision to settle in that exotic nation of mosques, deserts and Bedouins. Due to its commercial and political importance, he chose the city and port of Alexandria as the headquarters of his company - just 220 kilometers from Cairo - opening an artistic atelier dedicated almost exclusively to studio photographic portraiture.
At that time, the opening of a photography shop functioned as an advance of science and technology, and those foreign photographers acted as the architects of a phenomenon closer to magic than to reality. In their mysterious premises, a kind of theatrical act took place, where men and women came with their best clothes and jewelry to perpetuate themselves in silver halides. In those glass-enclosed posing galleries - almost always installed on rooftops - they posed in front of heavy velvet curtains, pictorial backdrops, flowery carpets and a set of stage furniture such as balustrades, pedestals or flower vases and even small cabinets that served as an appropriate ornamental frame to set the desired scene.
At that time, these studio portraits were obtained only with overhead sunlight and at times that fluctuated around midday; always under the artist's direction, the subjects had to pose as still as possible and, in this sense, metal artifacts such as neck restraints and other strategies were used.
We consider that A. Schier settled in the city of Alexandria in the 1860s. He opened his establishment in partnership with the Hungarian Otto Schoefft [1833-1900], both of whom formed a prestigious photographic firm that worked for several years focused on the predominant fashion, the format known as the visiting card. Although they did not dismiss the possibility of recording the great monuments of the past and, in this sense, the best example is the famous "Pompey's Pillar", a work built during the Roman Empire with red granite from Aswan, whose record documents that practice.
About his partner Otto Schoefft (1833-1900) was born in Pest - the eastern part of Budapest - and came from a family of painters. As a young apprentice living in Venice, he was mentored by the famous Carlo Naya [1816-1882], a pioneer of Italian photography who won awards at exhibitions in Paris, London and Vienna. Otto Schoefft is also the author of the photo album "Le Caire Pittoresque" which is kept in the Austrian National Library.
Woman with hookah. Image reproduced in the work Focus East. Early photography in the Near East - 1839 - 1885. By Nissan N. Perez [Abradale/Abrams; [1988]
For years, Schier & Schoefft devoted themselves to the profitable business of posed studio portraits, including among their clients members of the Egyptian high society of Alexandria, as well as foreign residents, travelers, archaeologists and diplomats. They even portrayed Western travelers dressed in Arab clothing. [1] They also published an interesting collection dedicated to the so-called "popular types," works intended for tourists eager to take home a souvenir of that exotic civilization. These are studio records, among which we can point out examples of various full-length characters such as suggestive dancers, a woman with a nargile, Bedouins, a seller of plants and flowers, and a water carrier or warrior with a scimitar. These works in carte-de-visite were delivered illuminated [colored] by hand and with great skill.
In Alexandria, the firm Schier & Schoefft ran two studios located at different key points in the ancient city; one on the Rue de la Mosquée and the other on the Rue de l' Églisé; these artistic studios were often promoted through the local press and sometimes on the back of small photographic works.
At that time, the French influence was very marked in Egyptian society and, of course, that language prevailed in the high circles linked to the world of commerce, culture and politics. It is not surprising then that the Austro-Hungarian firm promoted itself through the same; we give an example that is lithographically printed on the back of a photographic portrait and which is headed by a coat of arms with flags and the Turkish symbols of the crescent and star:
«Schier & Schoefft
Alexandrie
Photographes de
S. A. le Prince Héréditaires
le Muchir Méhémet
Tewfik Pacha
Schier & Schoefft
Alexandrie.»
An ingenious resource of those photographic firms consisted of asking for and obtaining the sponsorship or backing of the royal houses, as we see in this advertisement about Prince Tewfik Pacha [1852-1892] linked to the Egyptian monarchy. This commercial practice was projected from the 1860s until the end of the 19th century and expanded from Europe to the rest of the world. The message to clients was very clear: if the monarchy has distinguished us, the artistic quality of their portrait is guaranteed.
Emperor Franz Joseph I visited the brand new Suez Canal - inaugurated on November 17, 1869 - aboard the propeller corvette "Viribus Unitis" [in Latin, With the United Forces], personal motto of the Austro-Hungarian monarch who ruled that vast empire from 1848 to 1916. We believe that on that occasion his loyal subjects Schier & Schoefft must have taken photographs of the monarch, thus obtaining this royal privilege. Years later, and already settled in Buenos Aires, A. Schier used this Cross of Merit in his advertising located on the back of the portraits.
The partners opportunely expanded by opening a branch of the studio in the capital, Cairo, thus increasing its prestige throughout Egypt. In 1872 the partnership was dissolved and the premises passed into the hands of the Italian Cesare Bernieri [Turin, 1848 - 1887], a Garibaldian patriot, painter and photographer, portraitist of Victor Emmanuel II°.
In conclusion
After this photographic phase, the partners took different paths; for example, Otto Schoefft continued working in his profession through a new studio in Cairo. He edited a valuable collection of views - among them, the Great Pyramid of Giza with the Sphinx - and popular Egyptian types, printed on albumen paper in the largest size of 24.9 x 19.9 cm, and classified on the negative up to number 64. Some of these nineteenth-century images are preserved in the J. Paul Getty Museum in California [USA].
Regarding the works in carte-de-visite produced by Schier & Schoefft, we can say that they are found in the archives of thousands of families around the world but also in prestigious institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery in London with portraits of notable personalities such as Sir Robert Gilmour Colcuhoun [1803 - 1870] - English Consul General in Egypt -, Sir William Howard Rusell [1821 - 1907] - considered the first war chronicler for his reports on the Crimean War -, the chaplain and writer Edwin John Davis, Henry Hunter Calvert - British Vice-Consul in Alexandria -, or Eduard Lear [1812 - 1888] poet and illustrator. In turn, the work of these Austro-Hungarians has been valued in recent times, a trend that can be seen through auction houses in Europe and the United States.
Regarding A. Schier's later career, we will say that his adventurous spirit led him from 1872 to settle in distant Buenos Aires - 11,800 kilometers away - where he operated alone or in partnership - Schier & Leithner - for almost a decade, as we published in the first part of this research work.
Here the advertising in French of his photographic studios both on the back of the works and in the local press, always caught our attention, since Schier was of Austrian nationality and his mother tongue was German. The explanation must be sought in his stay of almost a decade in that Egypt strongly influenced by French culture, at least in its upper classes. This modality continued over time because, when settling in Buenos Aires, he continued to do so in that language, also very attractive to the local wealthy class.
Already settled in Buenos Aires, A. Schier - now in partnership with Leithner -, years after his adventure in the Middle East, published in the newspaper «The Standard» on August 14, 1873, a prominent advertisement in English inviting the Buenos Aires public to an exhibition at the Fusoni Warehouse on a series of photographic views of Egypt and Arabia, an exotic orientalist novelty at the time.
After his stay in Argentina, Schier packed his suitcases and the necessary photographic equipment to settle in the kingdom of Romania, more precisely in the small town of Foksany or Focsany in the region of Moldavia, just 185 kilometers from the capital Bucharest. Here he worked from the 1880s onwards where he continued to advertise on the back of his portraits as: «A. Schier - Decoré par S. M. l' Empereur d' Autriche» or of the monarch Francis Joseph I°.
This was the life of those intrepid "Photonauts" of the 19th century, working even in the most remote places in the world. They carried in their suitcases that new and surprising photography - from photós, and graphé which in Greek means writing with light - as authentic prophets of human progress.
Acknowledgements:
Hugo Basso; Osvaldo Betti; Ingrid Briege; Juan Gómez; Felicitas Luna; Marcelo Mazza; Noelia Perales; Luiza María Pereira; Héctor Pezzimenti; Fernando San Martín and Alfredo Srur (CIFHA).
Note:
1. This society was included among the most important photographic studios of its time in the recent publication by Sherif Boraie, A Face in Time. Egypt photo studios. 1865 - 1939, published in 2022.
Bibliography:
Abel Alexander, Christian Tourists - Reviving the Thousand and One Nights. Viva Magazine. Clarín newspaper. 03/12/2023.
Sherif Boraie, A Face in Time. Egypt photo studios. 1865 - 1939, published in 2022.
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