31/07/2026
Inspired by an article about the 19th-century French photographer Gustave Le Gray, I decided to prepare some short articles about these early pioneers, starting with Augusto Riedel. His work is deeply personal to me because he captured the oldest surviving photos of my hometown, Lagoa Santa, giving me the very first visual window into my roots.
My goal here is simply to spark some curiosity and encourage anyone interested in history and photography to dig a little deeper into these early masters.
Behind the Lens of the Empire: Augusto Riedel’s Travels in 1860s Brazil
Back in the 1860s, the vast interior of Brazil was mostly a blank space on the map for anyone living outside of it. If you wanted to see what it looked like, you had to rely on drawings or paintings. That changed when a handful of European photographers arrived with heavy gear and boxes of chemicals. One of the most important names from this group was Augusto Riedel, a German photographer who ended up capturing a crucial moment in time—the transition of Brazil from a royal empire into a modernizing nation.
Leaving the Studio Behind
Riedel started making a living with a camera around the early 1860s. By 1865, he was running a busy commercial studio on Rua Direita in São Paulo. His main business was shooting carte-de-visite portraits, which were highly fashionable among the city's wealthy elite. But Riedel’s career took a sharp turn away from studio backdrops in 1868. That year, he was invited to join a royal expedition led by the Duke of Saxe and Prince Luis Felipe, both sons-in-law of Emperor Dom Pedro II. Their goal was to explore the rugged heart of Minas Gerais, and Riedel was brought along to bring back proof of what they found.
Mules, Mud, and Wet Glass Plates
Traveling through rural Brazil with 19th-century camera equipment was a logistical nightmare. Riedel had to pack large, fragile glass plates, toxic chemicals, and a massive wooden camera onto the backs of mulas, moving across rough paths and unpaved roads. The photography method of the time, the wet-collodion process, made things even harder. He had to set up a darkroom tent right on the spot, coat the glass plate with chemicals, put it in the camera, take the shot, and develop it all within fifteen minutes before the plate could dry out. Dealing with tropical heat and intense humidity meant the chemicals didn't always behave, but Riedel still managed to pull off remarkably sharp landscape shots.
The Marks Left Behind
The photographs from that trip became some of the most critical visual records of 19th-century Brazil. When the expedition reached Lagoa Santa, Riedel photographed the home and the final resting place of Peter Wilhelm Lund, the Danish scientist known as the father of Brazilian paleontology. He also pointed his lens at deep gold mines, indigenous communities, and landscapes that had never been photographed before. Back from the road, these images were bound into a rare album titled “Viagem de S.S.A.A. Reaes Duque de Saxe e seu Augusto Irmão D. Luis Philippe ao Interior do Brasil no Anno 1868”. Today, those original prints and glass negatives sit in the National Library of Brazil, giving us a rare, unfiltered look into a lost era.
To see the harsh reality of 19th-century photography, watch the historical drama Godland. Set in the late 1800s, it follows a Danish priest traveling across remote Iceland with a heavy wooden camera and fragile glass plates.
https://brasilianafotografica.bn.gov.br/brasiliana/handle/20.500.12156.1/2/browse?order=ASC&rpp=20&sort_by=-1&value=Riedel%2C+Augusto%2C+1836-ca.1877&etal=-1&offset=20&type=author
https://youtu.be/0Hot2tpLLOc?si=jl_ImfDP5akaF-uI
