Scientific mobilities in the twentieth century: Gustaf Bolinder’s photographs of indigenous women in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

Scientific trips to America constituted a common practice in European expeditions; they were
thought of as part of the development of science in modern times. Such trips have become
more relevant since the eighteenth century, and have come to offer a set of tools for gathering
information through images, statistical data, and collected objects belonging to the material
culture and nature of the colonized territories, among others (Penhos, 2005). Many of the
activities carried out by scientists, naturalists and artists in early modernity designated them
as mediators between the representations of the social and natural reality of an unknown and
mysterious world reproduced in their stories, within the framework of an enlightened scientific
program focused on attaining universal knowledge.
During the middle of the nineteenth century, a nascent photography was incorporated
into the means of recording the observed reality by scientists. This intensified the arrival of
anthropologists, photographers and missionaries, among others, who led in the creation of
diverse images of the indigenous population that lived scattered in the dense forests, deserts,
jungles and mountains of the newly independent nations. The collective imaginary that underpinned this collection of information was based on the ideals of civilization and progress of
modernity, demarcating a space between the savage and the civilized, which the American
elites reproduced in their nation-shaping programs, and which had an important impact on
indigenous populations and their territories. These knowledge enterprises have been considered by contemporary historiography as subsidiary journeys for processes of “globalization,
the expansion of capitalism, the advance of imperialism”, the formation of national states and
the subsequent ideas that favored the configuration of American Republics (Sagredo, 2017,
p. 744).