Carla Lois and Veronica Hollman (eds), Geografía y cultura visual. Los usos de las imágenes en las reflexiones sobre el espacio, Prohistoria Ediciones/ National University of Rosario, Rosario (Argentina), 2013. 441 pages. $ 157, harcover, ISBN: 978-987-1855-36-0.

We live in a world in which the visual is assuming ever increasing importance. Our whole life is crossed by representations we grasp using the sense of sight: from traditional media, such as painting, photography and cartography to newer ones, including television, film and the Internet. Visual culture permeates all our actions and productions. It also permeates contemporary academic debate, and it is precisely this issue that this exceptional collection of essays addresses.

Geografía y cultura visual. Los usos de las imágenes en las reflexiones sobre el espacio (Geography and Visual Culture: Uses of Images in the Reflections on Space) is a real tour de force that (despite the title) goes well beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. The volume groups sixteen papers written by Argentinean researchers from geography, as well as  history, anthropology, literature, and art history. All the authors try to answer, from various points of view and using different examples, questions such as: What is the relationship between space, territory and their various forms of representation? How do these representations persuade, teach, argue, and even deceive?

Some of these representations are drawn from the world of everyday life. Doiny’s chapter, for example, analyses the production, use and meaning of what is possibly one of the most popular and pervasive types of cartographic representation: weather maps. Other chapters explore images and techniques used for didactic purposes. For example, the presence of maps in the classroom is a classical example most of us tend to take for granted and naturalize, almost as if they were another piece of furniture. Through different angles and using different time scales, Meaca and Hollman discuss the use and misuse of still and moving images, graphs, photographs and maps in school education. Likewise, Lois discusses the power of school maps in shaping geographical imaginations; she offers an extensive survey of the mental image that Argentines have about "the national map". She identifies two levels of understanding: one, more general and geometrical focussing on the “shape” of the country (in this case a triangle); the other, by contrast, capturing some characteristic features (e.g. the peninsula of Florida, in the case of the U.S.).

In other two chapters related to the history and use of representations, Dussel and Zusman center their analysis on the participation of Argentina in the Universal Exhibitions of the late nineteenth century. Graphs, maps and images used in that context became a way to “display and persuade”. This is a formula Spanish-speaking scholars have traditionally applied to museums; here, however, it takes another form, more dynamic and practical, yet tinged with ideology and intentionality.

Of course representations are also practical tools, as Mazzitelli shows in the case of topography, Rieznik in the extension of telegraph lines and Velázquez in the historical cartography of the administrative divisions of Argentina. Of course, such a rich and diverse collection could not have lacked the analysis of some specific forms of representation: in a very interesting chapter, Penhos analyses the iconography of the English Beagle expedition, to which Charles Darwin took part. The beginning of the nineteenth century is marked by the intersection between scientific description and aesthetic criteria. So in text and images, analyzed as in the way of a mirror, formal scientific discourse is interspersed with impressionistic observations. For example,scientists noting the elevation of hills attach attributes such as “picturesque” or “majestic”, which are in turn visually translated  into powerful chiaroscuri and  multilayered landscape constructions. Thus the spectacle of nature combines with the romantic rationalist aesthetic discourse so characteristic in travel literature since the accounts of Alexander Von Humboldt.

Following the same direction, Rodriguez analyses one of the first feature films produced in Argentina. The Last Raid was shot in 1917, only 13 years after the events it narrates. The subject was an Indian raid (malón) over a village of immigrant farmers located on the northern border of the pampas. The film is a mixture of fiction and documentary, as several of the actors had participated in the 1904 raid. The natives are painted from two different angles: on the one hand, as victims of civilization; on the other hand, as blood-thirsty savages (although the latter angle tends to be predominant). An interesting observation the author makes is that the film has two versions, the original and another produced seven years later. A scene was added to the second version, to which several political leaders took part. The scene comes to justify the violent reaction of the settlers in the framework of a new dispute with the Indians. Not only do images here act as historical documents, but also as political tools.

The usefulness and the intentionality of  visual representations are further developed in Williams’ chapter. Here the author analyses the role of mapping and photography in the Welsh colonization in Patagonia. This incipient movement, which began in 1865 in a distant and hostile territory as a way to attract immigrants from Wales, produced a characteristic iconography showing idyllic and quite unrealistic panoramas of prosperous farmers and enchanting landscapes.

Images operate as powerful  tools for persuasion that can be used for many purposes and in many different ways. This is the thesis of Troncoso, as she analyses the construction of a tourist place through a complex set of photographs, flyers and postcards. The  repetition of images accompanied by descriptive texts, Troncoso argues, does not only not prevent commonplace, but it literally builds it. The case study used by the author is that of Quebrada de Humahuaca, a valley in northwestern Argentina formally presented as part of the Andean imagery and increasingly popular among tourists thanks to its physical and cultural peculiarities. The promotion of the site   is implemented through the repeated  representation of specific places, which  are transformed into “must sees” .

In addition to the intrinsic value of the chapters, which are all highly original and well argued, the book includes a vast bibliography, which any interdisciplinary scholar will appreciate. Geografía y cultura visual is a book that bears witness to a shift from a predominantly written culture to a predominantly visual one; it shows a broad interdisciplinary audience how such change is played at very different levels and through different media and activities.