Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to interpret the modes of the photographic representations of the Mapuche world from 1870 to 1930, and the re-creation of its material culture represented and shown within a picturesque and fictive framework, and affirmed in its alterity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper proposes to interpret the modes of the photographic representations and the re-creation of the material culture of the Mapuche world. It is based on an analysis of the photographies taken to illustrate this community from 1870 to 1930, dates marked by the first artistic/ethnographic works done by the photographer Christian Enrique Valk (1826-1899), and then the French Hippolyte Janvier (1892- ?), as well as some anonymous captures. Most of them are today at the musée du Quai-Branly (Paris). Those photographies emerge in a historic context accentuated by the legitimization of a nationalist discourse and the progressive affirmation of the civilizing story of the modernity.

This paper focusses on how the Mapuches have been represented and shown within a more or less fictive framework (in their rites, rituals, movements, clothes et symbolic aspects). By becoming an icon, even a cultural model, the indigenous inhabitant has been represented in his difference based on his alterity. The challenge is therefore to define the meaning of these pictures and their identity, to examine how the « ethnological » photography has reconfigured a landscape and dawned up a symbolic portrait. The photography plays here the role of distributor of « authenticity », or even more, shows a significant ideal - of what is « Mapuche » - and contributes widely to install, in the scenario of the collective sensitivity in the early XXth century, the paradoxical or even controversial picture of a branch of the ancestors of the Chilean and Argentinian nation.

Paper short abstract:

The Mexican Revolution was a drawn-out, violent conflict, 1910-1920. Photographers graphically captured events during the Revolution that claimed perhaps a million dead, shaping our visual interpretation of the war.

Paper long abstract:

The Mexican Revolution was one of many revolts in the history of Mexico, but it became the most far-reaching. The Revolution was a drawn-out, violent and bloody affair, 1910-1920. Many photographers captured the devastating events during the Revolution that claimed perhaps over a million dead and led to the emigration of 890,000 persons to the United States.

Photography played an unprecedented role in the war. At the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, there were relatively few news photographers; however, over the years, the conflict was documented by seasoned professionals and those without expertise who had only recently picked up a camera. Photographs were made by Mexicans and foreigners alike, creating images from different perspectives. Little information remains about many of the photographers, and authorship of pictures is frequently unknown. Cameramen were often granted open access to soldiers and events, resulting in graphic portrayal of the reality of war and its human toll - material destruction, the life and death of the common man, Federals, revolutionaries and American soldiers along the border. The viewpoint of the photographers and their visual documentation shapes our interpretation of the Revolution and those war-torn times in Mexico. Through such digital collections as: http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/search/collection/mex/searchterm/revolution/field/all/mode/all/conn/and/cosuppress/

these images are more widely available for study today than ever before.

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Paper short abstract:

In Patagonia Argentina, between 1944 and 1955, a military government was installed and the state made a photographic record about its work. In this article we approach the popular identities in that process considering the photographs as our main source of inquiry.

Paper long abstract:

In the central region of Patagonia Argentina, between 1944 and 1955, a Military Government was installed. During this period, with the purpose of protecting the national oil and maintaining social order, the government developed specific policies within them a photographic collection. Those images focus in topics such as building construction, inaugurations, celebrations of national holidays, sporting events, aerial photographs, etc.

In this paper we are concerned with the sense of these images attending to the process of the Military Government around the popular identities during Peronism. From the Laclau's Hegemony Theory and Rancière's contributions we focus on considering the new political subjects.

Considering the pictures as our main source of inquiry allow us to ponder the photographic support and build tensions that guide the analysis around the process of the Military Government in Comodoro Rivadavia. Until this moment, the collection involved can be considered the only official source since the documents of the eleven years of military administration are not available

Paper short abstract:

This paper will analize three groups of photographs developed by Tomás Montero Torres for the right-wing journal La Nacion. Censured at his time, Montero´s critical “anti-revolutionary” images may now be serve to fill in the blanks of the official story of photography in Mexico.

Paper long abstract:

In 1946, art critic Antonio Rodríguez labeled the photojournalism of Tomás Montero Torres as "strong, dynamic, full of political intent, and extraordinarily combative: the work of a true photographer of the opposition". That an art critic known for his Communist affiliation should praise the photographer of the right wing journal La Nación Montero was indeed remarkable: what brought Rodriguez and Montero together was their shared disapproval of the corrupt workings of the party that would rule Mexico for 70 year, the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the "Party of the Institutionalized Revolution"). Of the photojournalists of his time, only Montero—from his position as a Catholic—dared to register the frauds, illegality, and violence associated with the governments in power between 1939 and 1959.

This paper will analise the significance of the work of Tomás Montero Torres in the context of the history of Mexican photography: a narrative that may now be explained as a populist and "revolutionary" dominant construction of the party in power. My paper will discuss three groups of images developed by Montero for La Nación that run against the grain of the official photojournalism of the time: 1) his images of mass movements of the emerging middle class; 2) his testimonies of the corrupt workings of the elections of 1946 and 1952; and 3) his representations of working women. Censured at his time and ignored afterwards by historians, Montero´s images may now be serve to fill in the blanks of a missing story of photography in Mexico.

Paper short abstract:

The photographic image played a distinct role in constructing a utopian narrative of Cuba’s early revolutionary period. Yet, in the 1970s, known as el quinquenio or gris (the grey period), a centralization of power and institutionalization of Soviet-style policies shifted its role and function.

Paper long abstract:

This study aims to examine the role of the photographer and the function of the photographic image in the context of the 1970s' shifting cultural politics and increasingly Communist ideological climate by focusing on the work of a generation of image-makers who emerged during this period. My presentation will feature two seminal photo essays, printed in two of Cuba's major cultural periodical that are each representative of distinct cultural political moments (1970 & 1975). The photographs are imbued with a personal aesthetic vision that challenged the purely didactic dimension of the journalistic photography that circulated during this period. As such, I argue that these two publications (Cuba Internacional and Revolucion y Cultura) became sites of relative artistic freedom not evidenced in other areas and thus revealed both an emergent and autonomous photographic language, as well as shifts in ideological attitudes.

Paper short abstract:

Since 1975, permanent exhibitions in the Museo de la Revolución have featured prominent photographic stories of a few revolutionary leaders. This paper contends that these images function as pivotal photographic microhistories and introduce broad socio-political ideas through intimate details.

Paper long abstract:

Founded by Revolutionary Government decrees in 1959, the Museo de la Revolución converted Cuba's former Presidential Palace into a home for new histories of the nation. Popular travel guides frequently describe that the exhibitions in the Havana-based Museo de la Revolución are "mostly photographs". Among the thousands of images displayed by the museum, permanent exhibitions feature prominent photographic stories of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and Celia Sánchez Manduley. These four individuals are now so familiar that they are on a first-name basis for most audiences, Cuban and international. Photographs of these figures before, during and after the battles of the Sierra Maestra introduce characters that suggest a very acute familiarity. The well-worn material condition of the photographs in the display, evocative of personal ownership, as well as visual characterizations that present these individuals as regular people—featuring them smoking cigars, playing cards, making telephone calls—converts the nearly mythical narratives of these figures into accessible icons. Such historical presentations, often called microhistories by some scholars, introduce broad socio-political ideas through intimate details. Moreover, as the photographs do not depict gory battle scenes, the Museo de la Revolución converts this history into the philosophical battle which audiences continue to wage today.

Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes the existence of evenemential image, a category of visual record that determines symbolic appropriation on urban spaces. Through analysis of a photographic series, we discuss its ability to link mediation, human experience and media documentation in Belém, state of Pará, Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the photographic act and its capacity of not only indexing, but also producing and mediating human experience in urban spaces of Latin America. Taking as an object of analysis the series "Fisionomia Belém", a collection of photos made during a research project conducted in Belém, state of Pará, Brazil, we defend the hypothesis of the existence of evenemential image - a specific category of visual representation that is able to determine symbolic appropriation and aesthetic experience through certain procedures that involve the photographic act and the capture of signs and elements from daily life. For this, we work with some presuppositions from Vilém Flusser, Dietmar Kamper and others about how imagetic representations compose human conscience processes and may change them when submitted to technical procedures. Our analysis intends to link different contributions from contemporary visual culture studies, in order to determine some characteristics of evenemential images, considering the works of Josep María Català about the complex image theory; Dulcilia Buitoni´s debates about narrative embryos; Phillipe Dubois´ argumentation about the photographic act and the indexicality of images; Milton Santos´ contributions to the studies of social processes in urban spaces; and Lucrecia Ferrara´s works on the relations between cities, media and mediation processes. At the end, we conclude that evenemential representations are able to build new significations in the contemporary urban environment of Latin America, considering its ability to link mediation, media documentation and human concrete experience in the cities which are converted into image.

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