Open Access

Hernández Quiñones Óscar Daniel

• This research analyzes the photographic output of the United Nations and its specialized agencies in documenting their technical assistance programs in Colombia during the postwar decades. The material examined comes primarily from reporting missions organised from the headquarters of entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the FAO, and deployed globally as part of ambitious public information campaigns that sought to legitimize the multilateral development model promoted by the UN. These missions resulted in the consolidation of extensive visual archives, whose contents circulated widely in various formats, including magazines, traveling exhibitions, albums, and official reports. Both the production and mass distribution of these images are understood in the text as elements of a single photographic project in which the various agencies collaborated, each within their own organizational structure. The study explores aspects such as the historical background, operational dynamics, and the prevailing humanitarian rhetoric about theThis research analyzes the photographic output of the United Nations and its specialized agencies in documenting their technical assistance programs in Colombia during the postwar decades. The material examined comes primarily from reporting missions organised from the headquarters of entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the FAO, and deployed globally as part of ambitious public information campaigns that sought to legitimize the multilateral development model promoted by the UN. These missions resulted in the consolidation of extensive visual archives, whose contents circulated widely in various formats, including magazines, traveling exhibitions, albums, and official reports. Both the production and mass distribution of these images are understood in the text as elements of a single photographic project in which the various agencies collaborated, each within their own organizational structure. The study explores aspects such as the historical background, operational dynamics, and the prevailing humanitarian rhetoric about the Americas within the collections, among others. The thesis aims to reflect on how certain visual languages ​​—typical of mass culture— contributed to conceptualizing a disputed notion such as development in a geographical space still neglected by literature, such as Latin America.…