View of Potosí

1928

Gerstmann, Robert (photographer; 1896-1960)

This photograph of Potosí stretching out to the Cerro Rico was taken in 1928. In highlighting the mountain where millions of pesos of silver were mined—and traded throughout the early modern world—this image underscores the lasting impact of Potosí’s reputation as inextricably bound to its mineral wealth.

From the 16th century to the present, the Cerro Rico (Rich Hill) has been the defining feature of Potosí, especially for outsiders. By the 1920s, when this photograph was taken, Potosí was dependent upon tin drawn up from the mines of the mountain, not silver. The silver mines active here in colonial times were worked by indigenous laborers and, to a lesser extent, African and African American men. Rising above the city’s roofs is the 18th century bell tower of San Francisco, a Franciscan monastery. At the turn of the 20th century, Potosí numbered among Bolivia’s most populous cities, with over 300,000 residents.

Roberto Gerstmann was an Austrian engineer and photographer who traveled across Bolivia in the late 1920s. His images depict miners at work in Potosí, indigenous residents of Bolivia and landscape views of the country. He also published photographs of Chile and Colombia.

This is a copper plate photogravure, a photographic print made from a copper plate that has been etched with chemicals. This method of printing photographs became common in the 1890s-1920s.

This photograph was published in the collection, Bolivia: 150 grabados en cobre, in Paris in 1928.

When Roberto Gerstmann took this photograph, the mines of the Cerro Rico were turning out tin rather than silver. Nevertheless many features established when Potosí was a wealthy silver-town can still be seen, including the dense packing of buildings along narrow streets and the towers of the city’s many churches. Today the city is one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites.

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Gerstmann, Roberto. 1928. Bolivia: 150 grabados en cobre. Paris, Braun and Co. Editores.