Boggiani, Guido (1861–1901)

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Boggiani, Guido (1861–1901)

Guido Boggiani was an explorer, photographer, and ethnographer of Paraguay's Chaco. Born in Italy, Boggiani studied painting and piano before traveling to Argentina and Paraguay in 1887. An adventurer at heart, he explored the remote Gran Chaco, keeping copious notes and recording detailed drawings of scenes of indigenous life. After returning to Europe and publishing his travelogue, I Cadvuei (Mbaya or Guaycuru), Viaggi d'un artista nell' America Meriodionale, in Rome in 1895, Boggiani returned to the Chaco in 1897 to continue his research; he published extensively and took more than three hundred photographs. His work comprises the classic ethnography of the Caduveo and Chamacoco peoples. In a death whose circumstances recall that of the famed conquistador Alejo García in 1526, Boggiani was killed during internecine fighting among the Chaco groups in 1901.

See alsoChaco Region; Chaco War; Paraguay: The Nineteenth Century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boggiani, Guido. Boggiani y el Chaco: Una aventura del siglo XIX: Fotografías de la collecíon FRIC. Buenos Aires: Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco, 2002.

Krebs, Edgardo. "High Noon in the Rain Forest." American Anthropologist 104, no. 2 (2002): 649-651.

                                   Richard K. Reed