Stories in Black and White: Afro-Latin Americans in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Photography

Although photography has played a pivotal role in how people see themselves and how they see “others,” scholars have written very little on the (self)representation of Afro-Latin Americans in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century photography. This study argues that photographic portraits produced during this period contributed to creating negative stereotypes about Afro-Latin Americans and legitimizing Black subalternization. However, it also contends that photography served as a means of Afro Latin American self-representation. This dissertation begins by contextualizing the subjugation and exclusion of African cultures that started with the colonization of the Americas. It uses the findings of the Subaltern Studies as a methodological tool in revisiting the past; and offers a theoretical conceptualization of the photographic practice, pointing out its limits and possibilities. Subsequently, it analyzes the corpus, which consists of photographs produced in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. These are examined taking into account their context of production and reception. As a result, this research indicated that mainly two types of photographs of Black people were produced in Latin America during this period: photographs taken for commercial purposes, which highlighted the “exoticism” and “otherness” of Afro-Latin Americans; and anthropometric portraits used by scientists to “prove” the biological and cultural inferiority of Black people. However, the analysis also showed that Afro-Latin Americans appropriated the medium to express their subjectivity. These photographs should be seen as counter-images that subverted the photographic practice in vogue. They open new ways of thinking about Black representation throughout history.