Relatos visuales de la memoria: el álbum fotográfico en las prácticas de viaje en Argentina mediados del siglo XX

Abstract

Objective/context: This work seeks to generate interpretations around a particular form of registration: photographic albums of leisure and vacation travel in Argentina around the mid-twentieth century. We study travel albums as an object that, through representational practices, allows for reflecting on the subjectivities and sensibilities of personal and public memory. Methodology: We use a qualitative methodology, understanding that the photographic collection gathered in an album is a cultural practice that reveals the values of those who create, preserve, and manipulate it and also of those who interpret it and give it meaning. The starting point is a limited corpus of albums from private collections, some acquired in antique shops and others lent for study by families who kept them in their collections. Creative variations may appear in them, as photographs, maps, tickets, and words coexist, traces that generate an intertext of discourses. Originality: Although there are some works related to family albums in Argentina and some approaches to travel photographs in general, the presence of specific research on travel photographic albums is fragmented, which is the subject of this article. Conclusions: The final reflections consider that travel photo albums have a powerful social and cultural relevance because, in their interpretation, other stories of the known history can be contributed, in which emotions and individual and private motivations can be perceived, as well as the creation of national, collective, and public representations.

Keywords

• album
• argentina
• photography
• private history
• public memory
• territory
• travel
• twentieth century