Aspirational Imaginaries and Hybrid Portraits: Painted Photographs From 1970s Chile

This thesis examines a collection of retratos pintados (painted photographic portraits) at the National Library of Chile. The collection consists of 99 pieces, most of which have order forms and original photographs attached to the versos, and probably dates to the early 1970s. After discussing the scholarly literature on the painted photograph, I describe the collection and discuss the production process and likely motivations of the clientele. Small-format photographs provided by the customers were enlarged and the enlargements painted over by hand. The final product often combined subjects from different photographs and added elements that were not present in the original photographs, such as formal clothing. Retratos pintados appealed to a specific clientele in 1970s Santiago: working-class women who wanted large, colour images of their loved ones. The enhancements they chose also point to their aspiration to forms of middle-class respectability.