Images et chroniques du bien et mal mourir

Nous proposons ici de réfléchir sur la représentation visuelle et écrite de la mort dans la presse illustrée massive à Buenos Aires vers la fin du XIXème siècle. L’objectif de ce travail est d’analyser l’incidence de ces publications sur les liaisons entre la mort et la culture visuelle dans le procès de massification de la photographie. Nous allons nous focaliser sur la revue Caras y Caretas (1898-1941), premier hebdomadaire illustré de circulation massive à l’Argentine et, comme tel, un acteur fondamental de l’insertion des images mécaniquement reproductibles dans la culture de masse du XXème siècle.This paper’s purpose is to analyze the relationship between death, photography and mass culture by studying the rhetoric on death within the illustrated magazines that circulated in Buenos Aires by the turn of XIXth century. We’ll focus on several instances of visual enunciation (photographs, caricatures, advertisements) as much as written texts (articles, contests, fiction literature). To that end we must examine the multiple mechanisms of interaction between text and image and its links with the funerary practices. In this regard it’s important to consider the historical evolution of funerary rites and attitudes towards death as they were widely studied from Philippe Ariès on, in order to see the incidence in this area of several important phenomena: from the enrichment and commodification of mourning –and their insertion in the early advertising industry– to the decay of some traditional practices like the post-mortem photographic portrait