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Show 25 materials as ethnological documents or as works of art. Tracing the progressive changes made to the original watercolor images as the aquatints passed through their various states can produce insight not only into the technical problems facing Bodmer as he produced the aquatints for the travelbook, but also into many of the broader issues he had to confront. Bodmer was commissioned to reproduce the watercolor images of the expedition for Maximilian the scientist, who insisted on accuracy. Yet, Maximilian the author demanded illustrations for his book that would appeal to subscribers. These two very separate demands forced a tension between the documentary and the artistic functions that the prints were expected to satisfy. Each of the eighty-one aquatints, then, becomes evidence of the pressures exerted upon Bodmer and of the solutions he chose. Close examination of individual prints as they passed through the various states also makes it possible to evaluate each print solely as a document. It is indisputable that, on the whole, the aquatints are inferior to the watercolors as documentation. The watercolors provide the immediacy of an eyewitness, Bodmer, who recorded what he saw with painstaking accuracy. The aquatints, on the other hand, by necessity were produced "secondhand" several years later by etchers who had never witnessed the events they were commissioned to reproduce in aquatint. This being the case, the watercolors, with few exceptions, remain the primary documents of Maximilian's expedition. However, it is more difficult to argue that the aquatints are artistically inferior to the watercolors. At the very least, care must be taken in any such discussion. The fidelity with which the aquatints duplicate the original |