Abstract

This article investigates photography as a tool of neocolonial territorial politics in the Cordillera of the Andes Boundary Case of 1902, in which Chile and Argentina re-negotiated their border in Patagonia. To avoid an impending war, they brought their case to the English King for arbitration. Scientists from all three sides compiled reports, maps and notably, photographs, providing proof for each country’s interpretation of the border. In a first step, I argue that the images of the hitherto uncharted land posed a challenge to the understanding of this land as national territory, having first to undergo a process of overcoming the uncertainty of empty space and acquiring scientific meaning during the arbitration. In a second step, I trace how the photographs and the case itself were resignified as expressions of neocolonial modernity and nation building. In this process, the previously limited capacity of photography was extended to support legal claims. The analysis of the development of the visual material in the trilateral negotiation distills the key factors that made the survey photography of this case successful in terms of contemporary imperial standards, or in other words, an example of ‘best practice’.

摘要

本文调查了摄影作为 1902 年安第斯山脉边界案中新殖民地领土政治的一种工具，在该案中，智利和阿根廷重新谈判了他们在巴塔哥尼亚的边界。为了避免一场迫在眉睫的战争，他们将案件提交英国国王仲裁。这三个方面的科学家都编制了报告、地图，尤其是照片，为每个国家对边界的解释提供了证据。第一步，我认为迄今未知土地的图像对将这片土地理解为国家领土提出了挑战，首先要经历一个克服空旷空间不确定性并在仲裁过程中获得科学意义的过程。在第二步中，我追溯了这些照片和案例本身是如何被重新定义为新殖民主义现代性和国家建设的表达的。在这个过程中，以前有限的摄影能力被扩展到支持法律索赔。对三方谈判中视觉材料发展的分析，提炼出使本案调查摄影在当代帝国标准方面取得成功的关键因素，或者换句话说，是“最佳实践”的一个例子。