Women and children first: age and gender in the photographs of the "Desert Conquest" in North-Patagonia, Argentina, by the end of the 19thCentury

ANA BUTTO

Artic & Antartic

Foundation for High Studies on Antarctica and Extreme Environments

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2017 vol. 11 p. 9 - 31

1851-4685

In this paper, we examine a corpus of 235 photographs produced during the "Desert Conquest", which was carried out in the late 19th Century in North Patagonia (Argentina), in order to track down the representations of age and gender of the photographed subjects: soldiers who integrated the military campaigns, western settlers and Indigenous peoples that inhabited those territories. This analysis showes that the photographic representation was set on the male military sector, presenting them as the builders of the Argentine Nation, disregarding the settler families and the indigenous peoples who inhabited these territories. Women and children, both Western and Indigenous, became invisible to the official history. We consider that visual archaeology allows us to critically examine what has been established as "natural" by the state-nation.