Coronado examines photography to further the argument that intellectuals grafted their own notions of indigeneity onto their subjects. He looks specifically at the Cuzco School of Photography (active in the southern Andes) through whose work Coronado argues for photography, in its capacity as a visual and technological practice, as a powerful tool for understanding and shaping what modernity meant in the region.

Jorge Coronado is Professor of Latin American literature at Northwestern University. His teaching centers on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literatures and cultures with a focus on the Andes.