The power of the 'anti-iconic' photographic archive and its historical representation effect: South America on the modern global map
Abstract
This article analyzes the power of the photographic archive, as a communication and knowledge strategy supported by objectivist premises, to build, from a private institutional framework, a narrative and discursive device that would historically redefine the role of the oil industry in the global society, and inserting marginalized cultures, such as South Americans, into a new regime of visual representation: a modern map. Methodologically, the case of the photographic archive constructed, between 1943 and 1950, by the oil company Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), is studied mixing traditional qualitative documentary methods and methods of visual studies, based on primary textual and photographic sources. The analysis of this case, which revolutionized the relationship between photography and history, puts on the table a relevant background to contrast the problems of contemporary communication linked to the phenomenon of post-truth and its relations with propaganda and advertising in the industry private.
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