Why would a nineteenth century photographic album entitled Vistas del Peru include amongst its 130 views of Peru and Peruvians1, two hand-coloured group portraits of Japanese people in traditional dress? Who took the photographs and when? Who compiled the album? What was the purpose of the album? How was it acquired by the State Library of Victoria? A barrage of questions indeed. In this essay, I discuss some interesting findings when answers to some of these questions could be found, and propose theories and guesses when hard evidence proved more elusive.

When the album Vistas del Peru was transferred to the Library's Pictures Collection2 (from the general stack collection) in 1986, it was catalogued and dated ca. 1872. The date was based on the fact that the album contained a number of views of the Lima Exposicion Universal of 1872, including interiors of the displays, and a number of views of the Exhibition Buildings, gardens and pavilions. No other information was known about it. Bound in red morocco and consisting of 132 photographs, most measuring approximately 25 x 32 cm. or smaller, some of the views were titled in English on their mounts. There is no information, however, about who the photographs are by or when they were taken (other than the views of the 1872 Exhibition mentioned above, of course). There is though an obvious difference in the quality and printing of each picture suggesting varying dates of creation.

Further, the album is not annotated with any Library identification, like an accession number, to enable us to trace how, when and why it was acquired. It seems the album was never accessioned.3 It is included, however, in The Catalogue of the Public Library of Victoria (1880), a two volume printed catalogue which served as the Library's catalogue until the card catalogue was completed in 1891.4 So we know that the Library acquired it before 1880.

It is now possible to argue that the photographs were taken by Eugenio Courret (1841-1910?) or by his firm, Courret Hermanos. The first clue which led to this attribution comes from Keith McElroy – the foremost expert on Peruvian photography – who informs us that by the early 1870s the Courrets were held in such great esteem by the Peruvian government, that they were given exclusive rights to photograph the facilities and events of the Lima Exhibition of 1872.5

The Lima Exhibition of 1872 was conceived to show off to the rest of the world the glorious social, economic, civil and political advancements of the Peruvian people and government achieved in the preceding decades. The period of the 1840s to the 1870s was a time of peace and great prosperity for Peru. Ramon Castilla's government led great expansion, beautification and modernisation of the capital, Lima, and introduced legal, social and educational reforms for the country as a whole. This time is known as the Guano Era because all of this progress was made possible by the enormous profits generated from the sale of guano (fertilizer made from bird and bat droppings) which was mined off Peru's coast.6 The country freed itself from foreign debt, which raised it in the esteem of European countries, and financed the building of its first railroads, linking Lima to its port, Callao, and neighboring towns. Peru was ready to show the world that it was a sophisticated, modernised country, and what better way to do this than by hosting a great International Exhibition fashioned on the 19^th century model? The decision was made in 1869 to have such an exhibition and in preparation, the old city walls were cleared and a compound of 192,000 square metres was constructed.7 An invitation for competitors was put out, and a list of prizes was published in the New York Times.8 The Exhibition was to open on 9 February 1872.

The Courret firm was made up of the French brothers Aquiles and Eugenio Courret. They opened their grand photographic studio in Lima in 1863 having arrived in Peru in 1861 and worked with the French photographic firm of Eugenio Maunoury and Co. They cultivated excellent relations with the Peruvian government and Lima's elite. After buying out their main competitor – Maunoury – they took over his luxurious studio/salon at No 1 Palacio Street.9 A view of this street is included in the Peru album.10 Their firm operated, and was the most successful in Peru, from 1863 to 1935. McElroy argues that it would be almost impossible to illustrate a history of Peru in the later half of the 19^th century without including Courret images.11 In 1873, Aquiles Courret resettled in France and Eugenio did the same sometime between 1887 and 1910.

Professor McElroy's research has proved invaluable in confirming Courret as the photographer of many of the views, as well as in identifying and dating many of the untitled views (and there are many) in State Library's album. For example, plate 12, titled 'Monument Lima', is identical to the image in McElroy's book and can now be more accurately identified as 'Monument to Commemorate the Combat de Dos de Mayo Nearing Completion'.12 The date is also provided by McElroy as 1874. And plate 86, an untitled view, can now be identified as showing the Monastery of San Francisco, Lima, based on other illustrations in his book. Most interesting though is plate 122, an untitled portrait of a Peruvian Indian. McElroy's book reproduces a carte-de-visite portrait of this same person with the same studio props.13 He discusses this portrait, saying it shows a person from the rainforests of the Amazon. While indigenous Peruvians from the coast and central highlands were familiar to most Peruvians, Amazonian people were still quite mysterious at that time. We learn that Courret is definitely the photographer, and McElroy hypothesises that portraits of Indians from this zone 'were probably taken in 1876, when four individuals from the area of Chanchamayo were voluntarily brought to Lima to visit the President'.14 This is a very significant piece of information because it provides the latest possible date – 1876 – after which the SLV album could not have been collated.

The digitised two-volume set of Courret Hermanos' Recuerdos del Peru (Remembrances of Peru), held by the Library of Congress and dated 1868, also proved invaluable in identifying and dating many of the views in the State Library's album. For example, we can see that the street in plate 44 of the State Library's album, though simply titled 'Street in Lima. Peru', is actually of the Calle del Palacio.15 We can date views of the town of Arica (plate 29) after the earthquake as taken in 1868.16 Further, 'Lima. Interior of new Alameda',17 shows an avenue planted with Norfolk Island pines at its head, which are the same age as those at the head of the same road in the State Library's 'Avenue in Lima' (plate 96), enabling us to date this view too as 1868 or earlier. And plate 121, an untitled portrait of a native Peruvian woman in the State Library's album, is titled 'Peruvian mulatto' in Library of Congress's albums, confirming, as will be discussed later, that the portraits were never intended to be of known and named people, but of racial types.

Other scholars have also enabled the identification of views. We now know that 'Gardens of Exhibition' (plate 74) shows the Presidential 'kiosk', as does the otherwise untitled plate 112. And 'Kiosk. Exhibition. Peru.' (plate 41) shows the structure under construction, placing the photograph's creation as 1871.18 Even auction houses have shed light on some of the photographs. The first five plates in the State Library's album join to form a panorama of Lima, showing the city from the north, looking to the south and centering on the Plaza De Acho. A copy of it was listed for auction in a recent catalogue.19 The auctioneers attributed the work to Eugenio Courret based on their research and advice from scholars.20 This is a rare panorama and an unattributed copy is held by the Library of Congress.21 Lima's city walls are identifiable in the foreground, giving us a clue to the possible date of the work. The panorama must have been created before 1870 as the demolition of the city's walls began in January of that year22 in order to open up new residential and civic spaces and to accommodate the National Exposition compound.

Albums such as the State Library of Victoria's Vistas del Peru were created for a number of reasons and served many purposes. Though photographic portraiture was their life-blood, the Courrets were keen to demonstrate their solidarity with their adopted country by producing works which demonstrated Peru's advancements and strengths. When the Courrets opened their photographic studio in Lima in 1863, Napoleon III was threatening Mexico's security, causing great anti-French sentiment in Peru, which supported Mexico.23 Ironically, there was a co-existing fascination with Paris, and a great desire by Lima's elite to be imbued with the glamour and prestige that came with all things French. Obviously this served the Courrets well, but they did not lose sight of the need to display their patriotism in order to stay in favour with Peru's government and the upper classes.

One such gesture won the firm great acclaim: they won a gold medal for a painting by A. Carpelet, Battle of Dos de Mayo 1866, in a previous Lima Exhibition in 1869. The painting depicts the Peruvians repelling the Spanish fleet as it attempted an invasion of the port town of Callao on 2 May, 1866. This day of national glory was held as a symbolic marking of the end of any European plan to re-establish colonial rule in the New World. McElroy outlines the three levels of creation and abstraction when describing how this work came to be. Firstly, the photographers captured enactments of the battle at the actual site; secondly, the artist, Carpelet, incorporated enlargements of parts of these original photographs in his large (three metre long) painting; and lastly, the Courrets photographed the resulting paintedpainted photograph for reproduction.24 The Courrets, as co-creators, entered the painting in the Exhibition. Copies of this awardwinning painted photograph are included in both the albums at the State Library (plate 107) and the Library of Congress (vol. 1 no. 7). The fact that it appears in the Library of Congress's album dates this photograph as before 1868. Other photographs created soon after the battle show military installations, a battery facing the sea at Callao, and militia loading and firing cannon.25

By far the most fascinating aspect of any country is its people. Our fascination is amplified and accentuated when we look at people from another place and time. The portraits included in the Peru album are no exception. They have a strange mystique because of the exotic nature, to us, of the people. The mystique is intensified by the fact that we are not told who these people are. They have no names and their only identity is their race. Five of the seven portraits and group portraits are of Peruvians, and perhaps included here by Courret to demonstrate another of Peru's strengths – its racial diversity. During the Guano period, Peru attempted to make all people equal before the law and abolished slavery and 'tributes' (taxes) paid by indigenous people.26 One of her most influential thinkers and writers, Manuel Fuentes, argued that Peru's people were like a 'field of flowers', that is, colourful and beautiful in their diversity. He attempted to list and log all the racial 'types' and label them by degrees of racial mix. He describes Indians before the conquest, Indians after conquest, women and men of the mountains, whites, Africans, Chinese and then what they were called when the races mix ('mestizos' when Indians and whites mix, 'chino-cholo' when Africans and whites mix, 'mulatos', 'zambos', and so on; it's quite a list).27

If these portraits are viewed in their historical context and analysed using current anthropological theories28, then the explanation, offered above, for their inclusion in this album, may seem rather naïve. A little historical background might be interesting at this point. Manuel Atanasio Fuentes (1820-1889), a statistician, lawyer, satirist, cartoonist and journalist, wrote his important work on Lima in 1866. His analysis of Peru's racial make up was not merely one that objectively describes the various races; he also ascribed personality traits like trustworthiness, laziness, and so on to them. The anthropologist Deborah Poole explains that Fuentes relied on the "physiognomic conventions of the time in which facial features were read as signs of an individual's moral character"29. She goes on to say that nineteenth-century racial theorists literally saw (or read) a person's "racial" identity (and hence history) from a set of visible signs inscribed on the body's surface30. A person's race was "written" on their body (in terms of their skin colour, hair and facial features, their clothing, embellishments and paraphernalia), and their personality, in turn, was determined by their race. And that was, for those times, meant to be enough in terms of categorising and understanding human diversity.

So where does that take us when we look at the album of photographs by the Courret brothers in the State Library's collection? Again Poole's discussion of Fuentes' work can shed light on the work of the Courrets. She argues that it is through images that readers have "gut reactions" and aesthetic responses to the posited racial "facts"31. So where words may fail to convince an audience, images do not. What was the nineteenthcentury viewer of the State Library's album being asked to see and surmise about Peru and its people? The photographs of the streets, buildings, exhibition grounds and public monuments provide evidence of Lima's modernity in the mid-1870s. They show an urban culture, and celebrate Peru's colonial traditions. Vast landscapes showing a train speeding by on an impressive bridge serve to demonstrate modern industry and ingenuity. Though there are numerous photographs of the countryside, coast and mountains, the rural, mountain and indigenous cultures of the Andes are not really explored or celebrated.

I would like to return to the untitled portrait of the Peruvian Amazonian Indian, plate 122, discussed earlier in terms of its date (1876). Many copies of this individual's picture seem to have been made and survive. A copy, showing the man in the same pose is reproduced in Michel Braive's book32 and McElroy reproduces a carte-de-visite portrait of him – Chuncho salvaje de la Montana del Peru (Wild Amazonian Indian from the Forest Slopes of Eastern Peru – held by the Museo Nacional de Historia, Lima.33 Further, a cabinet sized (15.0 × 20.0 cm.) copy was auctioned in London in 2007 and appears online34. This would point to the apparent fascination with the Peruvian natives of the Amazon. But the fascination was with the strangeness and 'savageness' of the native people. This man is posed in a studio setting, with an urn and classical column (so the viewer makes no mistake that he is in the domain of a dominant culture whose origins and loyalties are firmly based in Europe), and he wears his clothes, feathers, beads and hair decoration of the jungle. He is the anomaly; he is the savage in a civilized Peru.

The other portraits too show nameless people representing the races whose role it is to serve and follow. The men either carry their native weapons or are dressed in their ragged, poor attire. The portrait of the mulatto (plate 121) shows a woman of mixed race, further suggesting that through the mixing of races, they are diluted and not significant in defining the character of the nation. Again, to quote Poole on Fuentes:

By denying that pure racial extremes can be found in Lima, Fuentes simultaneously extracts his city from its colonial past of slaves and Indians and brings it closer to the

racial and cultural homogeneity considered constitutive of a modern nation-state.35

The Courrets too, construct a similar reality for the viewer with this album. The collection of portraits of Indians and natives in this album serve to provide a stark contrast to Peru as a modern state.

The most intriguing portraits in this album are two hand coloured photographs showing Japanese people in traditional dress. They are obviously studio, genre portraits very similar to those we know by Felice Beato (1832- 1900), Baron von Stillfried (1839-1911) and others, produced in Japan from the 1860s-1880s.36 One photograph – plate 126 – shows a banquet scene. Thirteen Japanese men, dressed in traditional robes, sit at a low table, drinking sake and eating. If we compare this image with Sumo wrestlers and umpire, a photograph held by the National Gallery of Victoria, we can see that it is by Felice Beato.37 One of the competitors in the Sumo photograph is the same man as in the banquet scene, sitting front, second from the left. His opponent in the Sumo photograph sits behind him in the banquet picture, looking over his right shoulder. Present also in the banquet photograph are the two observers of the Sumo match (one is sitting directly behind the table, while the other stands at the extreme right). Further, the carpet in the studio setting is also the same in both pictures.

The other photograph – plate 125 – shows a woman lying on a futon receiving a massage by a man with another woman in attendance. Though not signed, it too is by Beato. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has digitised an album of photographs by Felice Beato, Views of Japan, (ca. 1869), held by the Smith College Museum of Art. Here we can see that plate 3, titled 'Mode of Shampooing', is the same as the photograph in the Peru album.38 Though the bald, blind man is referred to as the 'shampooer', he is actually a masseur – a highly esteemed, rich and sought after class of person in Japan.

Felice Beato, a British photographer, was born on the island of Corfu, a British protectorate, and is said to be the world's first photo-journalist. He documented the Crimean War in 1855 and the Second Opium War in China in 1860. He also pioneered the panorama as a photographic format, and while in Japan, he utilized the talents and techniques of Japanese watercolourists and woodblock artists to produce exquisite hand coloured photographs of people and landscapes. This use of hand colouring influenced many other photographic studios in Japan, including von Stillfried's.39 The two images in the Peru album were produced by Beato between 1863 when he settled in Yokohama, Japan, and 1877 when he sold his business to von Stillfried (he left Japan in 1884).

But why would the Peru album, made up of 130 views by Eugenio Courret, include a further two group portraits of Japanese people by Felice Beato? The album is a collation – a show piece – designed to give the world a potted view of Peru's riches: the landscape, built environment and her people. It says: 'this is what we've achieved; this is who we are'. At first glance, the modern viewer would not be puzzled by the presence of the pictures of Japanese people because we know of the close relations between Japan and Peru/After all, Peru's President in the 1990s was Alberto Fujimori, a Peruvian of Japanese descent. So we might guess these photographs were included because the Japanese were a significant ethnic group in Peru. Yet there were no Japanese people in Peru in the 1870s and 1880s. The first Japanese migrated to Peru in April 1899.40 This is nineteen years after the State Library of Victoria first catalogued this album in 1880.

The list of the album's contents in the Library's 1880 Catalogue gives us a clue towards a possible explanation. Plates 125 and 126 are described as showing 'Chinese and Japanese figures'. The cataloguer and compiler of this contents list believed there were Chinese figures in these group portraits. Is it possible that these two group portraits of Japanese people were included as substitutes for Chinese people? The Chinese were in fact a significant ethnic group in Peru at the time. Chinese workers were encouraged to migrate to Peru after slavery was abolished in the mid 19^th century and slaves of African descent were repatriated to their homelands. Today an estimated 15 percent of the Peruvian population is of Chinese descent.41 It is not unusual for 19^th century photographers to take on the role of anthropologist in attempting to portray various racial types. Perhaps the Courrets, not having any portraits of Chinese people on hand (especially, as argued later, that the album was probably not collated in Peru, but elsewhere), included the Beato pictures – not as Japanese or Chinese (it is not clear that a 19^th century audience would have either known or cared about the difference), but as generic Asians.

There is no evidence that Beato visited Peru, but images by him would have been readily available in Europe at the time. The compilation was probably assembled somewhere other than Peru – possibly in Paris for the 1878 exhibition. There is evidence that Achilles Courret (Eugenio's brother) was in Paris at that time.42 The Courrets, finding themselves away from their studio in Lima, may not have been able to lay their hands on their own photographs of Chinese people for the album, so substituted the Beato photographs of Japanese people, which would have been available for purchase in Paris.

McElroy argues that works such as the Peru album were produced mostly for the foreign market.43 So how did the State Library come to have this album? There is no evidence that the album was acquired in Peru by an Australian, nor was it amongst the books, pictures and maps solicited as gifts by Redmond Barry while in the United States as the Commissioner of the Victorian Court at the Philadelphia Centenary Exposition of 1876.44 While Peru did exhibit in Philadelphia, no records remain as to the exact detail of their exhibits.45 The Peru album is not mentioned in the Melbourne Public Library's Report of Trustees, nor is it accessioned.46

The views in the album date from 1868 to 1876. So the album must have been collated soon after the later date, and the Library must have acquired it sometime between 1876 and 1880. But how, and when? In the absence of any conclusive documentation about the acquisition and provenance of this album, I offer a hypothesis. My theory is that the album was acquired by Library staff in Paris. As well as noting that

Achilles Courret (Eugenio Courret's brother and founding member of the firm Courret Hermanos) was in Paris for the exhibition in 1878 exhibiting his paintings, and Peru, as a nation, participated in the Exhibition.47 It may well have been that representatives from Victoria acquired this album from Courret or from Peruvian officials.

The Report of the Royal Commission for the International Exhibition, Paris, 1878 notes that £1,632 was spent on the purchase of exhibits in Paris.48 It was the practice at the end of international exhibitions for representatives of the exhibiting countries to sell, exchange or give away the goods displayed. The Public Library benefited from the Paris Exhibition as George Collins Levey, Secretary to the Paris Exhibition Commission, reports:

At the close of the Exhibition the goods were disposed of at satisfactory prices, and exchanges obtained, which have greatly enriched the Public and Parliamentary Libraries, the Department of Education, the National Museum, and other public bodies.49

From the Minutes of the Library and Gallery Committees, we learn that George Levey was authorised by those Committees to spend sums of money on the packing and shipping of purchases and donations from the Paris Exhibition.50 And then on 1 May 1879, the receipt of photos and books from Mr G. Levey is noted. The Annual Report of 1879 notes amongst donations received that year: 'A collection of 161 photographs of Pictures, Views & Co., obtained at the Paris Exhibition by George Collins Levey Esqu.'51 As there are no details of the particulars of this collection, it's not clear that the Peru album was part of it. The material that came from the Paris exhibition, either purchased or as a donation, via Levey, is accessioned in the 1879 register.52 The list is extensive, but is evidently of printed material (monographs and serials) only, because there is no mention of any pictures or photographs. Given that we know, from the note above, that at least some photographs were procured, my supposition is that the Peru album was amongst the 161 photographs mentioned in the Annual Report of 1879.

The collecting of photography by the Library began in the 1860s under the guidance and intervention of the Library's founder, Sir Redmond Barry.53 The Peru album is part of a collection now known in the Pictures Collection of the State Library of Victoria as the World Albums. This sequence is made up of about 120 albums – mostly 19^th century photography from Europe, the Americas and Asia – by a veritable who's who of the pioneers of photography. But because these collections of photographs have been largely ignored over the past 150 years, taking a back-seat to the cataloguing and digitising of photography with Australian subject matter, many works remain enigmas, food for thought and toil for the researcher. I hope that this essay has shed some light on just one of these wondrous collections and contributed to the dialogue on the history of photography and collecting.