ABSTRACT
Photographs from the Putumayo region available through Hardenburg and Paternoster document a social landscape just prior to its being recalibrated by professional anthropology. As the rubber industry rapidly wound down in the face of competition from Southeast Asian plantation rubber between 1914 and 1920, modern anthropology inserted itself into Amazonia not the Amazonia of a regional economy dominated by an export-oriented extractivism, but an economically stagnant Amazonia that included Indian societies which, despite the vigorous efforts of the government and private interests, had managed to survive into the 20th century. The 'Rondon expeditions' primary goal was to wire Amazonia for telegraphy, not to seek out and document native peoples. Images of green hell are familiar Amazonian artefacts, as are these two images timeless and uninformative evocations: unnamed stretches of river with little more than water, forest shoreline, and sky.
