“Fotografía y sociedad” [Photography and Society], is the title of the first chapter of the book by the same name by the Colombian researcher and photographer Edward Goyeneche Gómez. The text includes a well-reasoned criticism of the aesthetic attitude that the art field has adopted toward photography. The author states that “some researchers, especially in the field of art, appear to see photography as something outside history and tend to base their analysis on the idea that aesthetic and symbolic experiences exist beyond the fringes of society.” This is one of the central tenets of his thesis, which forms the basis of the other chapters in a book that consider the similarities and disparities between the production of photographic images and how those images are analyzed from the perspective of social sciences and art theory. Goyeneche Gómez also discusses the theoretical and practical foundations of his research, which, therefore, defined his field of study as the practice of studio photography in major urban centers in the Valle del Cauca region between 1870 and 1950.  

This document records one of the few research projects ever undertaken to explore the social uses and functions of photography in Colombia in the early twentieth century, a phenomenon that was interpreted as resulting from the country’s industrialization and march toward modernity. Here, Edward Goyeneche Gómez (b. 1978) discusses the photographic practices of some of the most representative studios in the Valle del Cauca region. He explores the European sources that were appropriated and used to compose images through a careful analysis of photography perceived as an activity characteristic of early twentieth-century society.  

Fotografía y sociedad [Photography and Society] is the product of research conducted by Goyeneche Gómez based on methodologies derived from the social sciences. His main concern was “to think of photography as a social practice” as he examined the “production of photographic images” as a kind of work influenced by commonly used techniques learned and applied at the moment of taking a photograph. But what were those techniques? How were they applied to photographic practices in a particular context? What was photography’s role in early twentieth-century societies, and how did ideas evolve about how to create images? What role did ethical and social standards play? How was photography used in a social context, and how did it function in that arena? These are some of the questions addressed in this document, to which the author responds with arguments that are solidly based in the study, review, and interpretation of a variety of sources, but which mainly arise out of his detailed examination of photographic images found in a number of different archives in the Cali region.   

Though the methodology of the study is derived from the social sciences, this document makes an undeniable contribution because it represents a detailed examination of the phenomenon of photography and the meaning of the evolution of the photographic image in the visual arts in Colombia. It also reveals the importance of the image as the basis for a research project that addresses a combination of historical, cultural, economic, and social aspects of one single subject.