Rich and extensive photographic archive of Walton T. Burres of Stockton, CA, showing his time in Peru, c. 1904, as an amateur explorer and doctor for the Inca Mining and Rubber Company, and his later work in Panama, c. 1918, with the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division.The present collection consists of a large number of loose photos, acquired by the gallery in 2021, and a recently discovered photo album, showing some of the same subjects and containing a few duplicate images (some printed in different sizes or formats), as well as hundreds of unseen prints which further to the the story of this Californian adventurer and his compatriots. Together, this material makes up the largest extant archive of the photographic work of Burres. Though his work was published at the time, both in Peruvian and American publications, much of it was lost when he dropped it in a river while attempting to ford it.

W.T. Burres was educated at California’s Cooper Medical College, the first school of medicine on the West Coast, and was a prominent member of the Stockton community before sojourning to Peru around 1900 to help the Inca Mining and Rubber Company address the deadly diseases endemic to the region like malaria and yellow fever. To encourage economic infrastructure in remote areas, the Peruvian government began granting land concessions to any company that would build roads, bridges, or river ports. As a result, the Inca Mining Company, an American outfit based in Tirapata, purchased the rights to mine gold along the upper Inambari River in 1896, and soon became the richest gold producer in Peru.

A large portion of Burres’s Peruvian images document his 1903 and 1904 excursion from Arequipa 150 miles into “rubber country.” The journeys were well-recounted in U.S. papers, and a number of the anecdotes described in print are seen in the present images.
There are many dynamic views of Burres and his party trekking through the dense jungle, summiting the high mountains, as well as shots of flora, fauna, and native Peruvians. Burres’s travel companions for this trip included the famed adventurer Harriet Chalmers Adams (later dubbed “America’s greatest woman explorer” by the New York Times). Adams and her husband Frank, both Stocktonians themselves, joined up with Burres during their own multi-year expedition through South America. There are a number of portraits of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Adams, but it is possibly another person.

Other Peruvian material includes numerous views of Cusco, Arequipa, and the surrounding environs, including a beautiful interior of a chapel, a Martin Chambi-esque detail shot of a stone wall, portraits of local townspeople, some identified as Quechua people. There are a number of lush, large-format cyanotypes, rich printing-out-paper views, and many handsome, small-format panoramas as well. . These were printed on Inca Mining Company surplus stationary, which speaks to the makeshift nature of photo-development under Burres’s circumstances. One particularly striking image shows the top of Misti volcano barely visible above the clouds. This image was reproduced in Burres's account of his travels, published in 1909 in "Outing" magazine.

The photographs from Burres’s time in Panama document his more serious work as a virologist and health administrator in the area. One interesting photo shows a pair of recently-shot iguanas with a caption notating, “blood of these reptiles found infected with Haemogregarina.” Another image is that of a new style of privy, built from concrete and wire-mesh, designed to better keep out rain water. There are also keenly-shot views of main streets and local culture in Los Santos, Chiriquí and elsewhere, including a number of humanistic group portraits taken at a girl’s school.

MORE IMAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.