Graphic culture and railway development in the Río de la Plata, 1880-1910

Abstract

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the development of the railways will characterize and condition regional integration, with a strong British impress. e companies that emerged contributed from their head offices established in London not only capital, but also a particular symbolic and social universe, which was connected in a unique way with the Argentine visual culture in conformation. This fact was inscribed in the broader context of the local printed culture. Periodicals, literary, scientific publications, often linked to partisan interests, to give some examples, increase their production and circulation in a politically and economically dynamic society.

In this article, the proposal is to advance in the survey of graphic sources, as well as the possible theoretical lines that will allow, in our view, to address them without prejudice to their material and historical complexity, both in the objects of study and in the modes of approaching them. Likewise, arise certain issues and problems that arise in the survey of the sources, regarding the link between the railway world and the press, from the practices and modes of circulation as well as the representation of the railway, its uses and potential readings.