Aby Warburg’s pictures of America: Indians, images and ruins

Abstract

The present article analyses the uses that Aby Warburg makes of photography during his trip to the American Southwest. We will start by pointing out the importance of photography for the construction of the field of Art History as an academic discipline, to show, in the sequence that photograph also played a central role for Warburg throughout his whole carrier, and especially in his process of immersion in Hopi culture during his stay in America. Throughout the text, we will analyze how Warburg, in his encounter with the reality of American natives, makes use of photography, as element of mediation and as means of establishing a distance to his object of research. Finally, we will raise some political questions implied in this encounter, essentially produced through his camera. In agreement with David Freedberg’s critique on the author we will question Warburg’s capacity to truly understand Hopi culture, suggesting that maybe in distant America he was only capable to produce an encounter with himself.