Abstract

DURAN, Consuelo. The Social Use and the Visual Economy of Photographs of Indigenous People in Bolivia (1870-1896). Rev. Cien. Tec. In. [online]. 2015, vol.10, n.11, pp.601-610. ISSN 2225-8787.

The use of photography from the social and economic point of view is a subject that has been little studied and even less if they refer to the indigenous. In this regard the work has done a description of visiting cards (1870) and postcards (1896) with the purpose of highlighting the intentions of the photographer to convert these images the object of marketing. For this purpose, the methodology was directed in two directions: In first place, documentary research was conducted in the Bolivian National Archive and Library and in the Bibliographical, Historical and Documentary Centre of the University of San Francisco Xavier of Chuquisaca. In these two institutions it was possible to identify visiting cards and postcards from indigenous which were the objects of study. In second place, iconographic analysis method was applied that allowed denote characteristics of photographic images revealing the photographer's intentions that were substantiated by theoretical information. The results were as follows: the visiting cards have been created for the immediate reproduction and circulation in the world. Consequently, in Bolivia are reproduced by the photographer with the aim of letting the world know indigenous Bolivians and with these cards the portraits are commercialized to foreign collectors. In the same way the postcards come to largely replace the visiting cards because they appear latter and the purpose given is also economic. In that time there was an interest of revealing the world the different Latin American ethnic groups, influenced by anthropological photography. In Bolivia something similar happens. In the late nineteenth century arrived to our country amateurs and collectors to buy and get portraits of indigenous in their natural environment

Keywords : The Use Social; Photograph; Indigenous People.

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