Abstract

MAJLUF, Natalia. Holding Back the Flood: Images and Modernization in Lima, 1861-1865. An. Inst. Investig. Estét [online]. 2025, vol.47, n.127, pp.187-234.  Epub Feb 13, 2026. ISSN 0185-1276.  https://doi.org/10.22201/iie.18703062e.2025.127.2921.

This essay explores the effects and repercussions of the first commercial photographic boom in Lima. In just five years, photography went from being an object restricted to the private sphere to becoming an intensely public vehicle, with enormous social impact, due to its thematic range and its entanglement in a dense web of exchanges that transcend photographic specificity. The reconstruction of the career of French photographer Eugenio Maunoury serves here as a thread to trace the sexual, political and social tensions generated by his practice among the Peruvian bourgeoisie. I follow the effects of this violent transformation and the responses that emerged in the press, editorial products and photography itself to contain what can be considered a true visual revolution. Conceived as a case study, the essay describes the tense social insertion of photography, the international projections of the medium, and the strategies that emerge to contain the commercial flow of visual technologies.

Keywords : Eugenio (Eugène) Maunoury; Manuel Atanasio Fuentes; Lima; photography; engraving; costumbrismo; international circulation; intermediality; tapadas; sexuality; race; class.

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