Photography and cigarette albums. Minor narratives in fin-de-siècle Venezuela

Abstract

This paper explores how the proliferation of images and its marketing during late 19^th and early 20^th century gave place to a series of aesthetic products difficult to classify. These products competed with more traditional forms of culture. Half way between artistic practices and commercial practices, they merged elements of high and low culture, art and market, text and image. I will focus here on these peripheral formats of the cultural field that ended up challenging the way of conceiving aesthetic practices. I will study the commercial photo albums that circulated in Venezuela at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century, especially the cultural narratives they built.