Clandestine photographs captured by Berni in the brothels of Rosario (Argentina), 1932

Abstract

The year 1932 takes place, the plastic artist Antonio Berni visits different brothels in Rosario with his Leica camera to collaborate with the journalistic investigation that Rodolfo Puiggrós was developing. Clandestinely obtains at least eighteen shots inside the houses of prostitution in daylight and in full operation. Three of them were selected to be published in the body of an article in the local newspaper Rosario Gráfico to denounce the Rosario brothel world in a year that marks the triumph of abolitionism in that city. The eighteen images and the complaint article were kept by Berni in his personal file. Later, he used those photographs as inspiration for the creation of different works throughout his artistic career.

This article, which is part of a larger work on cultural history and gender studies, presents a historical analysis of the photographic images captured by Berni in the brothels of Rosario, aspiring with this to contribute to the investigation of the experiences of women. prostitutes Studies the insertion of said photographs as a document or source of evidence and as a visual mechanism for the construction of meaning from the local press, taking into account the importance in the social world of photographic representation, its meanings, its complexity and its irreducibility to language.