On September 1937, the “Archivo Fotográfico General del Instituto del Museo” was created by means of a Resolution signed by Joaquin Frenguelli who was in charge of Museo de La Plata between 1934 - 1946 and 1953 - 1955.
This archive was formed both to protect the photographic material this institution had produced (and obtained) along its history and to illustrate its valuable collections. The 7° article of this Resolution established the photographs being arranged in the following sections, which are the ones we have followed for the clasification, organization and description of the materials: General Interest (Museum building and its dependencies, lectures, ceremonials, etc); Anthropology; Archaeology and Ethnography; Botanics; Geology and Physical Geography; Mineralogy and Petrography; Paleozoology (Invertebrates) and Paleobotanics; Paleozoology (Vertebrates); Zoology (Invertebrates); Zoology (Vertebrates). Also in this resolution the different research areas of the Museum were asked to deliver the new archive all the photographic material they hold along with the new photographs they shall produce. Moreover Museum researchers help was asked in order to identify and classified these visual materials. By reorganizing the materials following the critera of the above mentioned Resolution it was inevitable to break with the original order and provenance context of the pieces created in different situations like expeditions, field work and other possible Museum´s acquisitions.
These photographic documents, now included in a single collection named “Archivo Fotográfico General”, have suffered both the harshness of a conservation in places not adapted for their physical stability, and new manipulations in its arrangement according to criteria absolutely scolded with the archival principles of photographic material treatment. An example of the latter is the physical reunion of indigenous people´ portraits based only on thematic (subject-matter) criteria, no matter its belonging to a given section. Finally, we must emphasize that the inventories attached here only present one of the series included in the Second Section (Anthropology) of this collection: “Retratos indígenas”.
