Mujeres y fotografía en el siglo XIX españolEl ejemplo madrileño de la Colección Castellano, (1850-1870)

Abstract

The present work focuses on the close relationship that, during the nineteenth century in Spain, united women - whether photographers, sitters or simple consumers - with the photographic medium. In order to carry out this reflection, part of a corpus has been chosen that, today, we consider as one of the richest and most important photographic sets to understand nineteenth-century Spanish society: the Castellano Collection of theNational Library of Spain. Therefore, we have started from the nearly 22,000 portraits that make up the albums conceived by the painter Manuel Castellano between 1850 and 1870. To do this, we have developed a theoretical tour of the various photographic manifestations that came to seduce the female eye and ambitions. Also, thanks to the observation of what this affinity meant for the technical, commercial and artistic development of photography, a map has been established, characteristic of the importance that women had, through the instrumentalization of their own image, within the formation of a modernized Spanish society...