Urban visuality regimes. Composing the City of la Plata through photography

Abstract

The article analyzes how publicly circulated images visually compose the city of La Plata, Argentina. Based on a corpus of images produced and/or disseminated in 2022 by different thematic sources, differential regimes of urban visuality are examined. The photographs do not reflect reality, but are material interventions that organize ways of seeing, produce meanings, and express power relations. The analysis identifies contrasting axes – light/darkness, bodily landscapes, objects, geographical scales, and temporalities – that reveal a multiple, contested city in constant work of composition. While hegemonic repertoires emphasize urban problems or formulate institutional promises, alternative ones make visible memories, resistances, and appropriations of public space. Taken together, the images do not establish a single, stable urban identity, but rather expose social tensions, inequalities, and conflicting projects about what the city is and can become.