Iconographic Sequences From [Towards] El Alto

Authors

  • Pedro Aliaga Mollinedo Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/bsj.2025.380

Keywords:

El Alto 20th century, photographs, , audiovisual, theater, visual cultures, alteña aesthetics

Abstract

The following text is a transcript of my oral presentation at the first visual cultures session we organized in La Ceja, El Alto, under the auspices of Amta Café Cultural and the El Alto Community Archive in August 2022. The central proposal of this text is framed within the perspective of analyzing images that come from the past but have much to say about the way in which histories, identities, and perspectives on El Alto have been forged. For this text and its description and analysis, three types of iconographic sequences were selected, which we have classified as: (1) moving images, (2) narrated images, and (3) serial images. On the one hand, four audiovisuals are analyzed as documents for exhibition and analysis, all dated between 1939 and the 1960s. On the other hand, a script of a play by the national playwright Zacarías Monje Ortiz, dated 1928, is analyzed. This is, to date, the first fictionalization of the space now occupied by the city of El Alto. Finally, a set of eight photographs taken by American geographer Robert Swanton Platt in 1930 in what would become the city of El Alto is examined. Through this approach, I seek not only to examine the content of each type of image, but also to reflect on the interactions and resonances that emerge from these brief passages, revealing how each contributes to the construction of what I will call a “collective accumulated gaze” on El Alto/Los Altos. Towards the end, I propose that the images analyzed reveal various social, aesthetic, and historical dynamics in the city of El Alto.

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Published

2025-12-11

Issue

Bolivian Studies Journal Vol. 31, 2025

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Pedro Aliaga Mollinedo

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Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.