As primeiras «fotografias científicas» de um Cachalote (1890). Francisco Afonso Chaves e a Inexatidão da Imagem

Abstract

In 1890 it was published in Paris a text entitled «Des formes Extérieures du Cachalot», signed by G. Pouchet and F.-A. Chaves, illustrated with three drawings and three photographs (Journal de l'Anatomie et de la Physiologie de l'Homme et des Animaux). These are advertised as «the first scientific photographs of the whale.» Through them it is finally possible to «fix the exterior features of this animal, as famous as poorly known» and therefore, as stated in the opening, ending a long era of inaccurate representations. The authors of the article are two reputed naturalists: Charles Henri Georges Pouchet (1833-1894), an expert in cetaceans and professor of comparative anatomy at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris; and the Azorean Francisco Afonso Chaves (1857-1926), interested in fields as diverse as seismology, geomagnetism and especially the weather, but also dedicated to the study of the fauna and flora of the Azores. However Afonso Chaves is especially a remarkable photographer whose work, mostly stereoscopic, remained unknown. The aim of this paper is to analyse the photographs of Francisco Afonso Chaves and realize why they play a central role in the publication of 1890. As emphatically stressed by Georges Pouchet, they constitute the first scientific representations of a species hitherto poorly understood and poorly visually represented. But ultimately, what makes these photographs scientific? And how does the visual and the visible mingle in these images?