Dreaming through her gaze: Annemarie Heinrich and classical Argentine cinema.

The St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies welcomes Global Fellow Dr María Aimaretti (Universidad de Buenos Aires), who will deliver a talk on Annemarie Heinrich, the most relevant photographer during the classical industrial period of Argentine sound cinema: an agent of aesthetic modernisation and a synergistic protagonist of the cultural industry between the 1930s and the 1950s. Yet film history has long overlooked her career and contributions, reducing her legacy to the simplistic label of “magazine cover photographer”.

This presentation offers a series of reflections drawn from an ongoing research project that seeks to restore texture and dimensionality to Heinrich’s figure. It does so by working with selected materials from the paper archive within her personal and professional collection, which we have been cataloguing and systematising since 2022.

We will begin by outlining key aspects of the sociocultural and historical context in which her career unfolded. Then we will examine the multiple and layered facets of her professional profile as it evolved over time: worker and consumer, self-taught pupil and informal teacher, author and archivist.

Finally, we will discuss the need to recognise the historiographical value of this photographer’s paper archive, both by bringing it into dialogue with the images that once made thousands dream, and by appreciating it as a record of the life and craft of a working woman.

Event organised with the support of the Global Office, Film Studies and the CAS (Centre for Amerindian, Latin American and Caribbean Studies)