20th Century Argentina Through the Lens of an Ohio Man
Text by Oman Morí
Copy edited by Melis Ozdemir
A forgotten photographic archive from the early 20th century was discovered in 2013, offering a glimpse into a time of rapid transformation. Over a thousand glass plates and negatives, on the brink of deterioration, emerged from obscurity. These images captured the progress of Argentina in the first decades of the previous century: workers, machinery in the countryside, urban scenes, towns, and monuments. It's a tribute to the work of Ohio native Harry Grant Olds and a portal to the era's migration and innovation. After a meticulous restoration, this archive is now on display in Buenos Aires.
Harry Grant Olds was a photographer who owned a studio in Sandusky, Ohio. In the late 1800s, he received an offer from his uncle to work as a photographic operator in a prestigious portrait gallery in Chile. This opportunity immediately motivated him as he believed his unique approach was not receiving the recognition it deserved within his community. He once said, "In this town, my efforts to introduce innovative ideas in photographic art go unappreciated."
H.G. Olds
Seeking a fresh start, Olds resolved to leave his American life behind. His decision led him on a transformative journey in 1899, embarking on a nearly two-month-long trip to Valparaíso at the southern end of the continent. In 1900, he traveled to Argentina from Chile after shooting photographs with a 4x5 large format camera and working in the Chilean port. He crossed the Andes on a mule and eventually started running a commercial photo studio in Buenos Aires. A pioneer in a unique style of working on portraiture for the time, his studio became highly renowned.
With the fast-paced technological advancements in the early 1900s as a backdrop, Olds took advantage of a new approach to selling photographs: the graphic industry's expansion and the boom in photomechanical prints. He started gathering personal images and creating an impressive collection of historical visuals, including landscapes, traditions, and portraits. This connection with Argentina, his new home until his passing in 1943, resulted in iconic images of the era, often found in postcards and magazines of that time.
The photojournalist and photographer Alfredo Srur spent a decade curating and restoring Olds' archive after stumbling upon it, discovering it in the hands of an elderly colleague, Mateo Giordano, who had received the images from one of Olds' last assistants, José Zupnik. After gathering the files, he founded the CIFHA (Centro de Investigación Fotográfico Histórico Argentino) gallery in Buenos Aires, where the photographs are up to exhibition until September 30th.
