Eugenio Courret and the Courret Archive in Lima, Peru

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, Lima, Peru was a lucrative market which attracted many foreign photographers. By far the most successful and active was Eugenio Courret, a French citizen whose studios served this South American capital from 1863 to 1935.1 In 1987, the Courret Archive, of which approximately 57 000 glass-plate negatives are by the Eugenio Courret Studio, were acquired by the Biblioteca Nacional in Lima and another estimated 10 000 plates are still in a private collection along with the camera and darkroom equipment which were in use in the studio in 1935.2 In 1994 a major exhibition prepared from this archive, ‘Memoria de Una Ciudad: Estudio Fotográfico Courrct Hnos., 1863–1935’, was exhibited in Peru and in France. 3