The Forgotten Life and Papers of Alejandro C. Del Conte

The Fundación Centro de Investigación Fotográfico Histórico Argentino (CIFHA) will digitize and preserve the photographic and filmic work of Alejandro Del Conte (Argentina, 1897-1952). Del Conte was a pioneer of cinema and an advocate of photographic art during the first half of the 20th century who has been largely ignored in scholarship about modern Latin American photography and film history. His archive, salvaged by CIFHA in 2017, is currently inaccessible. Digitization will allow researchers to recogonize Del Conte’s contributions to early cinema and modern photography in Latin America, without which any history of visual culture in the Americas would be incomplete. The archive includes personal documents, including a large numbers of his own photographs, portraits of his family and known personalities, landscape and architecture photography in various formats, albums, diaries and correspondence, as well as materials related to his professional activity.