Exposing the Nation

Matthias Pfaller

Exposing the Nation: Histories of Photography in Chile, 1860–1960
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2026

344 pages, richly illustrated
available as hardcover and paperpback, 6 × 9 in., 978-0-8229-9210-3

Is photography a Eurocentric practice that others its subjects? In »Exposing the Nation,« Matthias Pfaller makes the case with a review of 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.

The book is based on a doctoral dissertation with which the author was awarded a PhD in 2021 at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

From the content: Introduction: Collisions and Transitions ● Territory: Politicizing Land ● Time: The Coloniality of Time ● The Other: Qualifying Alterity ● The Foreign: Itinerant Photographies ● El Rostro de Chile: National Exhibitions and the Popularization of the Nation ● Conclusion: Provoking Collisions

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