The Tiger and the Daguerreotype

Early Photography and Sovereignty in Post-Revolutionary Latin America

Bibliographic Data

ID2170178
AuthorsBrendan Lanctot (0000-0002-4100-0520, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume24
Issue1
Pages1-17
Publication date2015-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2014.1002458
OpenAlexW1989692083
LanguageEN
References cited14

In 1850 Charles DeForest Fredricks took a portrait of the Governor of Corrientes (Argentina) and, by way of payment, received a tiger. The episode, retold in numerous histories of early photography in the Americas, seems at first glance little more than a colourful anecdote set amid a rather dull litany of firsts: the first daguerreotype taken in this or that city, the first portrait studio, the first ‘native’ photographer, etc. Yet a close reading of the few primary sources about this unlikely encounter suggests that the oft-repeated vignette articulates in condensed form the unique power that photography possessed in mid-nineteenth-century Latin America. In giving a live beast in exchange for an image of himself, the local strongman not only makes a display of his authority, but also realizes a radical, if momentary, indistinction between animal life and social life – a literal enactment of what philosopher Giorgio Agamben identifies as the original activity of sovereign power. In this respect, the story of the tiger and the daguerreotype is representative of how, in the violent transition from colonies to republics in nineteenth-century Latin America, cultural practices were instrumental in making the idea of the modern state discernible

Anecdote · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Latin Americans · Litany · Literature · Political science · Portrait · Power (physics · Tiger · History · Law · Photographic and Visual Arts · Photography and Visual Culture

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