Garreaud, Emilio

He was a French photographer (1834-1875) who worked in Peru and Chile. In November 1855, at the age of twenty, he arrived at the port of El Callao, Peru, aboard the English ship Commerce, accompanied by opera singer Sophia Kammerer and fellow photographer T. Amic Gazan. Three months later, they opened a photographic studio in Plateros de San Pedro, near the studio of the American photographer Benjamin Franklin Pease. The name given to the studio was "Fotografía de París," which was a novel denomination at the time, along with terms such as "daguerreotype" and "ambrotype." In September 1858, Amic Gazan left the partnership, and Garreaud continued as the sole proprietor, under the name E. Garreaud y Cía. In June 1859, he opened a second studio on Plateros Street 239, featuring portraits of numerous personalities, various paintings, statues, and other art objects. Following Pease's example, Garreaud's gallery remained open permanently and became a gathering place where people could learn painting, listen to music, and enjoy popular visual games such as "cosmorama" or "optical cabinet."

Technically, Garreaud is considered the main promoter of the transition from daguerreotype to wet collodion photography in Peru. Throughout his career, he introduced various techniques and styles, including Rembrandt portraits, large-format or imperial card portraits, glasses portraits, miniature photos, photo-crayons, relief portraits on paper, enameled portraits, and mosaic portraits. Around 1865, he moved to Chile with his wife and opened studios in Copiapó, Santiago, Valparaíso, Talca, La Serena, and Concepción. In Chile, he adopted a logo that identified his photographs: the Chilean coat of arms, or a condor flying with a sheep in its claws and a volcano in the background. In 1867, his studio in Copiapó participated in the Universal Exhibition in Paris, as stated on the visiting cards in an album from the Cisneros Sánchez collection.