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Introduction

This work focus its attention in the analysis of the public and private in
photography, especially in its use as a medium to document the everyday life.
During the development of this research different cases were examined, in which
photography finds itself inserted in -and between- the public and the private concepts, it
was analyzed how their limits become blurred and how this has become an artistic subject
since the 20th century.
In the first section of this paper the concepts of public and private are defined. It will
be briefly commented the history and origins of the terms in order to understand in depth
their meanings, which have been changing through the centuries until arriving to
nowadays interpretation.
The second section is about the J.M.R. private collection of photographs taken in
Argentina from the 19th and 20th centuries. A brief introduction to the historical and social
context in Argentina will be made in order to understand the mechanisms of public and
private at that time. The relationship of these terms and photography will be analyzed
through selected pieces of the collection.
In the third section the most important milestones of the public and private terms in
history of photography in the 20th century will be narrated. In this period, the famous
Kodak company achieved to manufacture cameras for the general public to use without
any special knowledge on photography. The second part of this section is focused on the
impact of mass media in the practice and circulation of the photographic image, the
development of everyday photography as an artistic experience and its exhibition as
artworks in museums and art galleries, commenting and analyzing Nan Goldins work
during the 70s and 80s.

The fourth section explores the public and private concepts in contemporary
photography and their relationship with the technological revolution, Internet and social
media. The case of study in this section is the online proposal and itinerant exhibition
Visual Diaries/Girls. The exhibition is composed by pictures taken by eleven
photographers around the world that portraits their everyday life and expose them in
different mediums (Internet, social media, exhibitions in art galleries, publications and
blogs).
The objective of this works is to examine the public and private concepts in
photography, studying daily life photography.
The bibliography used in this work is wide, varying between the sociologists Richard
Sennett and Pierre Bourdieu, original quotes from the different centuries, essential
photography authors such as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, researchers Luis Pramo
and Abel Alexander, interviews to artists, press clippings and other researches on the
subject written by colleagues.

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