A City in Dispute: Grete Stern’s Photographs of Buenos Aires, 1936–1956

Abstract

Grete Stern began photographing Buenos Aires in the mid-1930s, but she turned to the subject with unprecedented intensity in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a period of heated debate over the social and political significance of the city’s physical makeup. During this time, Juan Domingo Perón, President of Argentina from 1946 to 1955, implicated the city’s landmarks and neighborhoods in his populist denunciations of cultural elitism and economic disparity. Stern’s urban photographs – published in sources ranging from artist-run magazines to commercial volumes and government-sponsored brochures – were created in dialogue with transformative disputes unfolding on the national political scene and within Argentina’s art world. This essay explores the stylistic diversity of Stern’s urban imagery and investigates the relationship between her images and the country’s long tradition of using photographs to promote and define its most populous city.