The Photographic Typologies: The Archive and the Physiognomy in Weimar Germany

Abstract

The use of photography in the cultural context of the 1920s and 1930s in Weimar Germany, lead to the existence of socio-political studies organized in typologies under the structure of the archive. The article explores the conditions that have made possible the emergency of typologies and photographic archives and the way by which in these studies the pseudoscience of physiognomy acquires tow different perspectives: humanist and racial. We propose to see through these forms of representation the use of photography during this period, in order to examine the limits that traced between these two perspectives, as well as, its relationship with the forms of power-knowledge.

Keywords

• fotografía
• archivo
• fisiognomía
• tipologías
• alemania de weimar.