Architecture et photographie d’architecture au XIXe siècle au Portugal

Abstract

The studies of history of photography are relatively recent in Portugal. So, the analysis of the linkage with the history of architecture, although attractive, will necessarily have to be taken with the necessary caution to a first approximation. In fact, if we think in 19th century architects photographers, we are almost reduced to the work of Possidónio da Silva (1806-1896). This Portuguese architect was formed in Paris, where he worked with Percier and Fontaine and became acquainted with the ideas of Caumont, experience that came to be reflected in the action that he developed when Possidónio returned to Portugal. Possidónio da Silva was the founder of the Portuguese Civil Architects Association (1863) later Royal Association of Portuguese Civil Architects and Archaeologists. He has devoted much of his life to archeology and to the study and protection of national heritage. In this work, he did use the photograph both as a way to documental registration and as a way of dissemination in the publications that he was associated. Indeed, it is as a mean of documentation that the photograph is being used in the second half of the 19th century. In 1880, the Government has appointed a team to make some travels by Portugal in order to, among other things, identify and assess the heritage value of buildings that he intended to sell. In this team, we already can identify a photographer, Carlos Relvas, along with an architect, Alfredo de Andrade (Boito's friend) and a journalist, Rangel Lima. The architectural photography, published or used as such in photo-editorial activity through collotype (Carlos Relvas Cunha Morais and Emilio Biel), photoengraving and zincography (Marques de Abreu) seems to be primarily a vehicle for spreading much of the historical heritage, and contemporary architectural production. However, it was only in the 20th century, that the interest of architects in photography was extended beyond the mere record or disclosure and which enters in the field of artistic photography or of the specialized photographers, whose spolium can be identified with the contemporary architectural production (Domingos Alvão, Mário Novais, Teófilo Rego). This paper, will try to identify the key moments of the evolution, in Portugal, of architectural photography and the relationship between architects and photographers on the 19th century