Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses the ways in which 19th century dominant mass-media visual forms of understanding the experience of Fin-de-Siècle modernity resisted, retreated and survived the rise of new ways of seeing brought by photo-cinematic technologies.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation discusses the rapid loss (or withdrawal) of 19th century ways of imagining and understanding that served as background to deep changes in Fin-de-siècle visuality. It focuses on the apparent detriment of contemporary visual orders, based on the conceptual structures behind conventional artistic representation (painting, drawings, prints) and page layout, caused by the uneven rise of another visual order brought by the conceptual structures of photo-cinematic images. The presentation explores the ways in which this conflict appeared as the simultaneous production of visual information that supported as well as challenged progressive discourses that were shaping Spanish American urban middle class readers' perception and understanding of mass society. Its corpus is formed by the illustrations published between 1892 and 1920 in the Uruguayan-Argentine Caras y Caretas magazine.