Rethinking the photographic object, an approach from the Affect Theory

The present work explores the affective features that are imprinted on the photographic object, as well as on the collections which they are integrated to in its evolution over time. In this framework, it nourishes from the tools of the “affective turn” to open an analysis of the photographic object to identify elements that broaden the information horizon, which is used in arranging and conserving collections in repositories. The exercise focuses on two photographs of the Aurelio Robles Acevedo Fond that keeps the Historical Archive of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and analyses them considering the proposal of Ann Cvetkovich in An Archive of Feelings and of Sara Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, which insist on studying archives from slightly distanced perspectives that identify them as cultural texts receiving feelings encoded in the content or, like a “contact zone” that includes imprints of institutional and personal nature.