Forest, photography and exhibition: visual construction of the Amazon through Charles Kroehle’s negative photographic images and the album República Peruana 1900

Abstract

Between the years 1888 and 1891, German photographers Kroehle and Huebner began a journey into the Amazon rainforest that, with the passage of time, has become epic. During their trip, they took a series of photographs of the rainforest landscape and population, generating a collection of more than 200 images that became an essential reference for the visual construction of the Amazon. One of the main spaces in which these negative photographic images were presented and used by a “global” audience was the album República peruana 1900, a document prepared to be displayed at the Universal Exhibition of Paris held in 1900. The purpose of the following text is to reflect on the photographic work of Charles Kroehle in our country, highlighting the importance of his images for the construction of national imaginaries and global scientific narratives about eastern Peru.