Historicising girls’ material cultures in schools: revisiting photographs of girls in uniforms

Abstract

ABSTRACTMaterial culture being a central part of the production of schoolgirls’ identities and subjectivities, historians have approached it through the study of the material remnants of artefacts, written or oral accounts and registers, and visual records of their existence, each of which has their own strengths and limitations. In this article, I propose a reconsideration of photographs as points of entry into the history of schoolgirls’ material culture. Photographs have been frequently taken as transparent carriers of events; yet cameras produce particular visibilities about schoolgirls and their school experience that need to be further scrutinized and explored. Bringing together visual history with the contributions of new material feminism, actor-network theory and material studies, I analyse a series of photographs of girls in uniforms and dress codes in Argentina. The series, which ranges from the 1900s to 1940, moves from panoramic views to close-ups, in a trajectory that follows the shifts in photographic styles and technologies and in the visualities in which girls were inscribed. I argue that we cannot consider the history of material culture as something distinct and separated from the history of the inscriptions and records with which we as historians work.