Format: Paperback
Pages: 376
ISBN: 9780822967767
Pub Date: January 2026
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
Illustrations: 96 illustrations, mix of color and b&w
Price:
£30.00
Not yet published
Description:
Pfaller argues that photography is a Eurocentric practice that others its subjects. Exposing a Nation questions a national historiography of photography and images produced in Chile over the course of a century. There are multiple photographies, and they have a variety of uses: science, politics, tourism, family traditions, ethnology, art. They appear in a diverse array of media: government albums, family albums, mass-produced postcards, exhibition prints, scientific records, and published books. Pfaller demonstrates the versatility of photography on the one hand, and the ways in which the national paradigm and modern historiography influenced the production and reception of photographic images on the other. It becomes clear that “national photography” is not a genre of its own, manifest solely in specific discourses. Rather, the nation, photography, and history are meta-discourses that pervade the very idea of Chile as represented through photography and the photographic image.