In the Photo Library of the National Library, on a rainy and gray Monday in November, Abel Alexander moves like a fish in water. He greets the workers in the sector and asks them to bring him some old images for photographic production. His 12 years of work there left their mark.
At 81, Abel looks splendid, with a hat on his head and his eternal white beard. Photography historian and owner of a vast collection of old photos ranging from 25 to 50 thousand, is president of the Ibero-American Society of History of Photography and member of the National Academy of History of the Argentine Republic.
And it is also the faithful readers of Viva know it, the author of the biweekly column Memoria Viva, which celebrates its first ten years with the proposal to edit an old photograph accompanied by a brief historical, social, aesthetic and photographic commentary. Throughout this decade, more than 200 photos have been published, by more than one hundred different photographers.
-How did you approach the world of old photography?
-I dedicated myself to photography professionally as a social photographer. For ten years I did weddings, birthdays, until I gave up. I had separated and formed a relationship with a girl from Brazil. One day, my father was having a barbecue and a relative came in with a magazine from the Argentine Automobile Club saying:
“Here is a note about Argentine photography and it talks about a certain Adolfo Alexander.”
My father says, “He’s my great-grandfather.” But he had never told me that we had a photographer ancestor! In those years, in the perception of Argentine society, being a photographer was just another job…
-And what did knowing that your great-great-grandfather was a photographer mean to you?
-It changed my life. When I read the note I tried to contact the author, who was Vicente Gesualdo and who later became my teacher. I told him I was a descendant of Alexander, he welcomed me and told me his story. I discovered that he was born in Hamburg, Germany.
The first invention of the daguerreotype was in Paris, in 1839, and my great-great-grandfather already had a photographic studio in Hamelin in 1847. Practically since the discovery of the daguerreotype.
I got into an incredible story because of that article. In the attic of the house, Dad kept his things, so there I discovered the oil portraits that had been made in Germany of him and his wife. The connection begins very early, it is a world pioneer. In 1850 he arrived in Valparaíso, then went to Copiapó, in Chile, and then to Mendoza first and then to Buenos Aires.
A vast collection
-When did you decide to start buying photographs and become a collector?
-I owe it to Miguel Ángel Cuarterolo, former photography editor of Clarín. When I was just starting out in the field of photography, he told me: “You can’t study old photography without having a collection, even a minimal one.” Then I started buying photographs in different formats. This was around 1980 and I couldn’t stop anymore.
Abel Alexander in the Photo Library of the National Library. / Photo Maxi Failla -How many photographs are part of your collection?
-I haven’t counted them, but I estimate that I have between 25 and 50 thousand photographs. I never had much money and when the photo began to have value, I didn’t have the money to buy it. I always helped myself to the bottle sellers/cartoneros who sold what people threw away. I have a lot of social photography, not just from the studios. Of people on vacation in Mar del Plata, Tigre…
-And what are the most precious photographs you have?
-I have a daguerreotype made by my great-great-grandfather for his mother, from 1847, which is set in a silver ring measuring 1.5 cm high x 1 cm wide. It is looked at with a magnifying glass. I also have another one about General Justo José de Urquiza, made by an American daguerreotypist; I have an early photographic collection about the Frigate Sarmiento when it sailed around the world for the first time.
In addition to first portraits for business cards… I can put together a museum in 24 hours. You give me a property, a normal house and I fill it with photos…
-And are you still buying today?
-If I buy it has to be something made by Alexander. For example, he took a view in 1860 of the Buenos Aires Cathedral. And recently they gave me an image made by one of Alexander’s children of Rosario schoolchildren against a brick wall; People mail me boxes of family photos.
Abel Alexander looks at an old photograph. / Photo Maxi Failla -What do you think of digital photography, where today everyone with their phone portrays every fact of life all the time?
-Since its birth, photography has had technological changes every twenty years, more or less. The last one has been terrible, perhaps the most important. It killed analog photography, people no longer buy cameras, film, develop or copy anymore.
Never in the history of humanity have so many photographs been taken as today and never in history will there be so few photographs left. I don’t see a future for digital photography. I don’t think these photos will last a hundred years. The paper photo is there. That’s why I tell people that, if you take a hundred digital photos, print one on paper, which is what will remain.
But I have to confess that digital photography has been of great help for old photography. For the first time we had a tool to reproduce old photos. The revaluation of old photography is partly due to digital photography.
-What period do you find most interesting in Argentine photography?
-That of prehistoric photography, with the system of unique positives where copies could not be made. The first photos of Argentinians posing, the first portraits; then came the positive negative on which copies could be made. People entered the studio and the photographer took 12 photos in different poses and then they were distributed and thus the photo album was born.
-Which photographers do you consider to be the most interesting?
-From the 19th century, I really like the work of Cristiano Junior, who was a Portuguese photographer living in Argentina. Also Alejandro Witcomb. They set a course. In 1889, the amateur photographic society was created, many linked to high society, who began to document their families and their travels.
Francisco Paco Ayerza portrayed the life of the gaucho with the project of making a photographic Martín Fierro. And from the 20th century I highlight Horacio Coppola, Grete Stern, Annemarie Heinrich, Sara Facio, among many others…
-You are a pioneer researcher and archaeologist of ancient photography. What is photography for you?
-Photography is the triumph over death. We all, without thinking about it, pose for photographs and we don’t want to die. I didn’t know my ancestors, but through the photos I have them there. Photography is magical, a wonder that records a portion of reality.
