Images of women in railroad culture. The magazine of the F.C.C.A. as a case (Argentina 1911-1915)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the Central Argentine Railway Magazine, between years 1911 and 1915, from the visual studies and the social history of women. The representations of women that appeared in the magazine since its first issue, until the beginning of the Great War reveal tensions between the pretended transparency of the images and the materiality of the print object, its production, manipulation and circulation, defining it as a cultural device, crossed by discourses about differences and gendered roles. We consider that the railway and the illustrated magazine functioned as social institutions through which cultural symbols (and the normative concepts associated with them) circulated. We intend, based on the analysis of illustrations and photographs of women, to understand how the printed image reinforced or stressed those meanings, constructing a representation of the feminine within a context signed by masculinity.