Carleton Watkins Homo Faber—Man as Maker
However, it was also noted that Valparaiso was "the source of a thousand pleasures" referring to the relaxed moral standards, pervasive sensual music and generally playful habits. The fact that Valparaiso in the 1840s had the reputation as a place with libertine moral standards cannot be ignored as a possible reason why some unmarried North Americans settled there. "Public virtue is neither a sentiment nor an observance inValparaiso,"[15] wrote one visitor. For example, an entire district was devoted to brothels[16] and there was a well-known subculture of men called "shoppies" who loitered in public places, especially around the theater, and made themselves available for companionship.[17]
From the very outset Vance established some peculiar business relationships with several different men, who were nominally partners in portrait photography businesses. The first of these was James Lerow, who is believed to have taught Vance the craft in Boston, and with whom he established a daguerreian business that was hastily dissolved in late1846.[18] The relationship is peculiar because Lerow was Vance's senior and a heroic pioneer of photography in Boston from the early 1840s. The business partnership, however, was designated "Vance & Lerow,"[19] with Vance's name preceding that of his mentor. It was peculiar for the name of a novice in photography to precede that of a seasoned master in a creative enterprise like theirs. The partnership lasted a year or less and was dissolved about the time Vance departed Boston for Chile.
Soon after his arrival in Chile, Vance established a short-lived daguerreian portrait business, with a man known to us only by his family name "Hoyett" [Fig. 3] doing business in Valparaiso and with rooms also in Chile's capital, Santiago, located a day's journey inland from Valparaiso. Mr. Hoyett is not known to have practiced photography anywhere before or after his brief association with Vance, which suggests he was not trained as a photographer, thus it is unclear what skills he contributed to the partnership.[20]
[15] H. Willis Baxley, What I saw on the West Coast of South and North America, New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1865, p. 195.
[16] Gorham B. Coffin, ed., A Pioneer Voyage to California and Around the World: 1849-1852 by Captain George Coffin, Chicago, Privately Printed, 1908, p. 36.
[17] Frederick Walpole, Four Years in the Pacific in Her Majesty's Ship "Collingwood," from 1844-1848, London: Richard Bentley, 1850, pp. 108-109.
[18] Alexander, p. 13.
[19] PEP 1991, p. 7.
[20] Alexander, p. 14.