Collecting, Exposing, and Denouncing: Photographic Repositories and the Construction of Visual Narratives of the Rubber Era

Abstract

In Peru, the commemorations of the centennial of the ‘Putumayo Scandal’ offered the ideal conditions for discussing the meaning of rubber exploitation and its impact on the indigenous population of the Amazon through different artistic, journalistic and academic perspectives.
The present work offers some insight into photographic archives and their uses in the construction of the visual memory of the Peruvian Amazon. It recognizes the way in which recent exhibitions and illustrated publications covering the rubber period insist on a timeless and Manichaean display of this phenomenon and the actors involved in it. In this way, we reconstruct the production process of the clichés referred to the rubber exploitation and its early circulation emphasizing the context in which they were created, the compilation of these images in various collections and repositories and, finally, their so-called ‘discovery’, as well as their selection, exhibition and use in the construction of contemporary narratives about the history of the Amazon and its link to the rest of the country.