The Other’s Other: Portrait Photography in Latin America, ca. 1890–1930 (original) (raw)

2018, Beyond the Face: New Perspectives in Portraiture

Photography, a medium characterized by its alleged transparency and objectivity, became the principal symbolic device to capture and conceal identities since its invention in 1839, and portraiture, therefore, played perhaps the biggest role in the configuration of the medium. In Latin America, the invention of photography, and its early arrival to the continent in December of that same year, coincided with post-independence political processes and discourses. As opposed to the European experience, where national consolidation and an established visual imaginary existed prior to the invention of photography, in Latin America the medium developed during the processes of nation building in the postcolonial period and, in many cases, before the consolidation of Fine Art Academies. Therefore, the photographic image played a crucial role in the definition of identities, which were different from and specific to each geographical area. Any attempt to homogenize, or rather to trace, a distinctive character of what Latin American photography was, would only fail to describe the complexity of the production. What will be done here, instead, is present a critical analysis of three case studies, which delineate some of the strategies utilized in the artistic and commercial work of studio photographers from different regions through the ideas of progress, modernity, and race. This essay will look into the ways in which portrait photography fostered the construction of particular identities through the work of Benjamín de la Calle and the studio Fotografía Rodríguez (Horacio Marino and Melitón Rodríguez) in Colombia; Martin Chambi (1891–1973) in Peru; and Romualdo García (1852–1930) in Mexico.