Boundaries of the letter: word/image in the liberal project of Jorge Zalamea

Abstract

As part of the Colombian liberal project, Jorge Zalamea (Bogota, 1905 - 1969) was fierce detractor of the position of power held by the media in the early 20th century. According to him, the Conservative party was engaged in saying a lot but not doing anything, controlling the rhetoric as a tool of distinction and segregation. Zalamea’s editorial project questioned the centrality and boundaries of the word through publications that employed different means and arts to re-configurate the spaces of the representation of the national affairs. This work explores the relationship between photography and text in La metamorfosis de su excelencia (1951), as well as the composition of El gran Burundún-Burundá ha muerto (1952), as an impure text.