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Unidentified Photographer

TITLE ON OBJECT: Facade of Mexico City Cathedral and "El Parian" [The two-story structure to the left was the enclosed marketplace known as the Parian. It was torn down on June 24, 1843.]

ca. 1840
daguerreotype
16.4 x 21.5 cm; full plate
Gift of Eastman Kodak Company: ex-collection Gabriel Cromer
GEH NEG: 23123
76:0168:0139

OLD GEH NUMBER: #18 (CROMER)

EXHIBITION HISTORY:
"French Daguerreotypy", US, NY, Rochester February - June, 1977.//
"Mexico: los proyectos de una nación, 1821-1888", Mexico, Mexico City July 5, 2001 - January 6, 2002.//

INSCRIPTION: stamp on back of plate: Alphonse Giroux

NOTES: From box 77.461.211.A16. Cataloged by J. Buerger. Fernando Osorio Alarcon believes that these were the first photographic images of Mexico and suggests that these were made by Jean Prelier Dudoille, a French engraver living in Mexico City. It is recorded that Prelier arrived in Vera Cruz on December 3, 1839. A newspaper account dated Jan. 21, 1840 noted that Prelier had recently made several daguerreotypes in the area of the Cathedral in Mexico City as a public demonstration of the process. Osorio speculates that Cromer may have acquired the plates from Baron Louis Gros, who visited Mexico in 1852. They may have been purchased from Prelier, or from descendants that returned with the plates to France. Additionally he raises the possibility that Fanny Calderon de la Barca (1804-1882), the Scottish wife of the first Spanish envoy to independent Mexico, acquired the images as momentos of her travels in Mexico (Dec. 18, 1839 to Jan 8, 1842), or may even have been the daguerreotypist herself. Osorio Alarcon, F. "Los Daguerrotipos Mexicanos..." in "Mexico en el Tiempo, revista de Historua y Conservacion" Year 3, No. 22 (January/February 1998).

SUBJECT: architecture, cathedral

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