Psicofotografía: Grete Stern and the Administration of the Unconscious

Abstract

Between 1948 and 1951, photographer Grete Stern constructed a heavily manipulated taxonomy of dreams, realized in the form of 149 photomontages for the popular Argentinian fotonovela magazine Idilio. The series, now commonly referred to as Los Sueños, counterintuitively represents Stern's rejection of Surrealism and demonstrates how classifying systems in the postwar context were deployed to popularize psychoanalysis, normalize authoritative didactic imagery, and collapse formerly distinct economies of desire. The ideology of consumption underpinning the project both affirms and exceeds the historically specific boundaries of Peronist nation-building to portend the sub-rosa forms of surveillance and self-administration that would come to characterize post-industrial culture.