Emergence of a Field

Abstract

This chapter explores the discursive emergence of the photographic field. I elucidate the connections between the discursive emergence of the photographic field and the state of emergency installed on the same day the new Constitution took effect. My analysis considers how this expansion took place in the middle of Chile’s most severe economic crisis (which reached a climax in 1982), and also how the prevailing precariousness determined both the discourses about the photographic field that was beginning to consolidate, as well as the materiality, themes, and formal aspects of the different initiatives designed to consolidate the photographic field. The chapter also discusses the economists referred to as the Chicago Boys. In this chapter, I consider the texts published in Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes’s (Independent Photographers Association, AFI) magazine Punto de Vista (1981–1990) and the two Anuarios fotográficos edited by the AFI in 1981 and 1982. I also analyze two collaborative photographic projects: Ediciones económicas de la fotografía chilena (1983) (Affordable Editions of Chilean Photography), and El pan nuestro de cada día (1986), a book edited collectively by photographers Óscar Navarro, Claudio Pérez, Paulo Slachevsky, and Carlos Tobar.