Forms of Life, Photography, Extinction

FLORENCIA GARRAMUÑO

Guido Baselgia ? Als ob die Welt zu vermessen wäre Mit Textbeiträgen von Florencia Garramuño und Teresa Gruber

Edizioni Periferia

Lugar: Zürich; Año: 2019; p. 2 - 9

In Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation Mary Louise Pratt analysed in detail the construction of a vision of nature that was central to the imagination and ?reinvention? of America and of Africa during the 18 th and 19 th centuries and which accompanied a new phase ofcapitalist expansion.The work of photographer Guido Baselgia presents notable differences to these ?imperial eyes?. Like in these 19 th -century travel accounts, his photographs can be seen as the component parts of a ?travelogue?, the genre par excellence of the ?imperial eyes? that Mary Louise Pratt identified in certain discursive practices that sought to describe America ? and Africa ? as a place of exuberant nature ripe for exploitation, in this way legitimising the European neo-colonial project. In them, Pratt identified a series of colonizing gazes that reveal, despite their differences, a single imperial viewpoint. This article analyzes Baselgia´s project on the Amazonia Rainforest as it discusses the tradition of Amazonian representation.