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🇦🇷 Argentina /Culture & Society

Los Angeles museum opens exhibition of photographs from Clarín and La Razón

From Clarín · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • The Wende Museum in Culver City, Los Angeles, has opened an exhibition drawing on photographs from the archives of Argentina’s Clarín and La Razón newspapers.
  • “Between 2 Empires: Argentina in the Cold War Pendulum (1946-1989)” covers the rise of Peronism, the return to democracy and everyday life across four decades.
  • The Archive of Modern Conflict reviewed, digitized and catalogued about 25,000 photographs for the project.

More than 9,000 kilometres from Buenos Aires, photographs from Argentina’s past are telling their story again on the walls of a Los Angeles museum. The Wende Museum in Culver City has opened “Between 2 Empires: Argentina in the Cold War Pendulum (1946-1989),” an exhibition drawn from the archives of Clarín and La Razón.

The images span more than four decades, from the emergence of Peronism to the restoration of democracy. They record major political events, but the exhibition also turns toward the life unfolding around them: work, holidays, customs, entertainment, technological change and the small scenes that shaped several generations.

The Wende Museum, founded in 2002, combines an art museum, historical archive and cultural centre focused on the Cold War and its global consequences. Its collection contains more than 100,000 works, objects and documentary materials. The German word “Wende” means a turning point or transformation, reflecting the institution’s aim of preserving historical material and bringing it into conversation with the present.

Photographs change in drawers.

· Eduardo GilThe Argentine photographer’s observation is used to describe how time and distance can give archival images new meanings.

The exhibition grew out of a project launched a year and a half ago by the Archive of Modern Conflict, with David Thomson and curator Timothy Prus. During the process, staff reviewed, digitized, catalogued and identified about 25,000 photographs individually. Images that had remained stored for decades were given the chance to circulate again and be viewed in a new context.

The photographs were made by newspaper photojournalists working under immediate pressure. They had to arrive, look, take the picture and return to the newsroom with an image capable of telling what had happened. As photographer Eduardo Gil has said, “Photographs change in drawers.” At the exhibition’s opening, curator Inés Marseillan said, “When an archive comes back to life, photographs begin to create new stories, new questions and new encounters.”

When an archive comes back to life, photographs begin to create new stories, new questions and new encounters.

· Inés MarseillanThe exhibition curator spoke about the renewed significance of the photographs at the opening.
About this summary

Originally published by Clarín in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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