Taken in 1921 by Augusto Malta, when municipal lights had just been replaced by incandescent light bulbs.
Born in 1864, Augusto César Malta de Campos was one of Brazil’s most important photographers at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, with most of his work covering the District Federal, that is, Rio de Janeiro.
Malta was born in Alagoas, in the far north-east of Brazil, and moved to Rio in 1888, when the city was still home to the Imperial Court. After declaration of The Republic, he joined the Municipal Guard between 1889 and 1893. Then, trying his hand, without much success, as a bookkeeper, a dry goods and fine cloth merchant, he found in photography the vocation that would make him famous as the most expressive visual chronicler of the massive changes at the start of the 20th century in the then-capital of Brazil.
In 1903, Malta was introduced to the then mayor, Pereira Passos, who appointed him “Official Photographer of the General Directorate of Works and Roads of the Municipal Authority of the Federal District”, becoming responsible for the official image of the modernisation of Rio de Janeiro. In 1904, he was the founding member of the Sociedade Cartophila Internacional Emanuel Hermann, which selected images for distribution as post cards. Later, in 1908, in one of Malta’s greatest photo reports, he accompanied a group of a few hundred American sailors disembarking in Rio, recording their visit to the city’s red-light districts.
Malta passed away in 1957. Some 27000 of his photos reside at the Instituto Moreira Salles.
The Dom João VI Palace
The building now houses half the Rio Museum of art, which was inaugurated in 2013. The building in the photo is the Dom João VI Palace, built in the Eclectic style. João VI, or John VI, was the emperor of the Portuguese empire at the time the royal court fled Portugal, fearing Napoleonic forces.
In 2013, the museum won the ‘best construction’ award in the ‘museum’ category in the prestigious Architizer A+ Awards, beating the Heydar Aliyev Centre (Azerbaijan), New Rijksmuseum (The Netherlands), Zhujiajiao Museum of Humanities & Arts (China) and the Danish Maritime Museum (Denmark) for the top spot.
Take a picture in the very same place!