Carleton Watkins Homo Faber—Man as Maker
On the other hand, Vance expressed no fascination for photography's magical quality—for him it was all business. Vance's journey to the north of the southern continent took him to some remarkable sites of the ancient Inca civilization in Bolivia and Peru, as well as to cities established three centuries before by the Spanish conquerors. From the city of Nuestra Senora de la Paz, Bolivia,[33] he traveled to Arequipa, Peru, where he was for approximately a month.
From Arequipa he traveled to the city of Cusco, Peru, via the Cordillera of the Andes mountains. If Vance had taken his camera into the streets of Arequippa and Cusco, or made daguerreian views of the landscape and monuments that he encountered, none have survived. The exotic look of the city of Arequipa is shown here in an engraving from a drawing [Fig. 6] made two decades later. However, there is scant evidence that Vance was interested in any type of photography other than portraiture. The journey from Arequipa to Cusco would have also brought Vance into the presence of spectacular landscapes [Fig. 7] and monuments [Fig. 8] of awesome wonder that begged to be photographed.
However, the inventory that Vance prepared of one hundred thirty-one daguerreotypes in his possession in 1851[34] included just one picture that could have been made on his grand tour of Bolivia and Peru in1849-1850, and just two describe scenes in Valparaiso, where he had lived for two years. They are item number 108 entitled, "View of the Cathedral at Cuzco, Peru." And items number 130-131 describing an English Admiral's house and the view from the American Consul's residence.
The lack in the inventory of even a single other view showing monuments or landscapes in Bolivia or Peru that he visited during almost a year of travels in 1849-1850, strongly suggests that Vance had little or no interest in using his cameras to record what he saw in the exotic and isolated places through which he traveled.
[33] Vance had a pattern of stretching the truth in his communications and it is more likely that he spent a few weeks, not a few months, in Bolivia as his July 26, 1849 letter infers.
[34] R. H. Vance, Catalogue of Daguerreotype Panoramic Views in California on Exhibition at No. 349 Broadway, (Opposite the Carleton House), New York: Self-Published (Baker, Godwin & Company, Printers), 1851. See the reconstructed facsimile by Gary W. Ewer found at http://www.daguerreotypearchiv.org, and Peter E. Palmquist, "The Sad But True Story of a Daguerreian Holy Grail," in Silver and Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush, Drew Heath Johnson and Marcia Eymann, eds., Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998, p. 62. Vance cataloged a total of ten views made in Latin America, including nos. 103-109, 130, 131, daguerreotypes that Vance had in his possession when he arrived in San Francisco sometime during the second half of 1850. Vance refers to himself as cataloger of the pictures not their maker. Prior scholarship has presumed that Vance was the maker of the inventoried works, an assumption that is now being questioned.