El Montevideo's Centro de Fotografía. Visual culture and public institutions in the era of the image

Abstract

This article presents the working processes and the policy of the Centro de Fotografía (CdF), an institution that belongs to the División Comunicación de la Intendencia de Montevideo (IM). The aim of the CdF is to foster the reflection, the critical thought and the construction of civic identity from photography. CdF’s premise is that pictures mark the daily life of our societies. Therefore, its goal is to generate activities and products seeking to facilitate tools to the citizens to understand the underlying mechanisms in the production and circulation of pictures, so that they are regarded as subjects and not only the object of visual accounts. To preserve, to document and to give access to the photographic archive generated by the IM since 1915, to produce pictures about the contemporary city life, to create spaces so that the work of Uruguayan and Latin American photographers can enrich itself and have a better circulation in the region and worldwide, and to develop formation and educational stages for the valuing of the Uruguayan and regional photographic patrimony, are just some of the actions that the CdF is carrying out.