A visual turn in a visual discipline: images and geographical imaginary of Argentina

HOLLMAN, VERÓNICA

Jena

Conferencia; Ciclo de Conferencias del Centro Internacional de Estudios Interdisciplinarios Argentian/Cono Sur Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena; 2016

Universität Jena

Geographers deal with different genres of images in the production, communication and teaching of geographical knowledge. Generally speaking, the geographer´s profession has been constructed and legitimized around practices that are based on a visual tradition: geographers analyze, produce, search and compare images particularly cartographic images; they also go into the field to look, describe landscapes and obtain visual evidences. Furthermore, since the beginning of the twenty-first century Geography has enlarged the production and the use of images taking advantage of the development in both hardware and software as well as the access to fast cheap Internet connections (Thornes, 2004; Scholttmann and Miggelbrink, 2009). Despite this visual matrix, both images and the ways of seeing promoted by the discipline have received scarce attention. The so called visual turn started breaking the ?imbalance between a progressive habitualization to the use of visual materials and the paucity of related critical reflection? (Scholttman and Miggelbrink, 2009:1) by acknowledging the importance of the pictorial in the practices of geographers to understand how places are shaped and imagined. In this lecture I propose to discuss three dimensions of this turn: i) a historical dimension, by looking at the role of vision in the geographical tradition as well as the images that have been recognized as part of the geographical discourse; ii) a theoretical dimension, by analyzing key issues raised by the visual turn to the discipline; iii) a visualized agenda of research, the visual turn challenges our current agendas of research. Based on my research work and focusing on Argentina images and I will identify three topics of research opened by the visual turn.