Between the Archive and the Artworld: Writing Gendered Histories of Ibero-American Photography

Abstract: In recent years, a growing body of scholarship on women photographers in mid-twentieth-century Ibero-America has emerged in connection with exhibitions that have helped bring their work to the larger public. However, the importance given to notions of individual authorship, originality, and rarity in art market dynamics, institutional practices, and critical discourse on photographic images encourages scholarly work that often overlooks their print culture context. In this essay I argue that careful attention to the role of illustrated magazines as media for the circulation of photographic images helps us recognize photography’s value as an emancipatory practice that empowered women in rapidly expanding markets of print culture. To illustrate this proposition, I examine images by Kati Horna and Grete Stern, whose trajectories as exiled photographers working in proximity to the illustrated press exemplify the role played by women of Central European origin in shaping the medium’s gendered history in Ibero-America.