Question of Time. Notes on Photography and the Idea of Civilization in Nineteenth Century Argentina

  • Verónica Tell CONICET / UNSAM
Keywords PHOTOGRAPHY TIME CIVILIZATION BARBARISM ARGENTINA INDIGENOUS PEOPLES Fotografía Tiempo Civilización Barbarie Argentina Pueblos Originarios
Keywords PHOTOGRAPHY TIME CIVILIZATION BARBARISM ARGENTINA INDIGENOUS PEOPLES Fotografía Tiempo Civilización Barbarie Argentina Pueblos Originarios

Abstract

The objective of this text is to analyze a handful of visual representations from the late 1870s and 1880s that express the complex dichotomy between the categories of ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarism’, a culturally constructed narrative that emerges as a contingent response to a specific conjuncture. The goal is to present the ways in which a series of images display this dichotomy anchoring its meaning in terms of the triumph of one over the other through different temporal-spatial references. I will refer to temporal (or even temporal-spatial) questions inscribed in the photographs: a theatrical handling of a past; the future projected in the materialization of the camera’s shadow; the showing of Argentina marching to a global, universal rhythm. In closing, I will examine another time in these and other images: the one imposed by their material existence.


 

Published
2021-05-18
Section
Articles / Artículos