Art or document? The debate in photography magazines in Argentina in the late 1960s

Abstract

The political climate of the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s in Argentina was characterized by deep expectations of social change, in a scenario of struggle against the military dictatorship inaugurated in 1966 by General Onganía. In general terms, this process reached its maximum expression in 1969 with the popular uprising known as the «Cordobazo». In the field of local photography, the debate for decades had focused on the recognition of photography as art, but with increasing intensity on the importance of its function as an instrument in the struggle for social change.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the importance that «Fotografía Universal» and «FotoMundo», the two most widely circulated and popular magazines of the time, had in the elaboration of a novel and heterogeneous conceptual-theoretical corpus that proposed to extend the aforementioned debate on Argentine photography, which until then had been limited to the photoclub sphere, to the national print media, as well as to public and private institutions related to the visual arts.

In order to support this hypothesis, we propose a comparative analysis of the narratives and communication strategies that both publications employed during this period, as well as the aesthetic, conceptual, and political positions that, on many occasions, they confronted each other or the tastes of the public.

In this way, we hope to draw attention to actors, discourses, and media that have not yet been studied and that will certainly contribute to a rewriting of this short and intense period in the history of Argentine photography.