The exhibition Un viaje a Chile a través del archivo neerlandés opened on 16 October 2025 at the Embassy of Chile in The Hague, presenting for the first time a selection of María de las Nieves de Braganza’s photographs from her 1904 journey to Chile, as part of the 200-year commemoration of Dutch-Chilean diplomatic relations. The images—part of the Bourbon de Parme archive kept at Radboud University’s Katholiek Documentatie Centrum—show the Latin American country through the eyes of a European aristocrat at the beginning of the twentieth century: religious processions, urban scenes, landscapes, and moments of daily life that connect Chile’s early modern identity with the wider visual imagination of empire and travel.
"Un viaje a Chile a través del archivo neerlandés": Exploring Chile through the lens of early 20th-century photography
The value of family archives and historical dialogue
The evening began with a warm welcome from Ambassador Jaime Moscoso Valenzuela, followed by opening words from Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme, who reflected on the importance of preserving family archives as spaces of historical dialogue, and reflected on the importance of academic freedom at a time of heightened discursive control by the current hegemonic powers. Prof. Dr. Brigitte Adriaensen (Radboud Institute for Culture & History) addressed the public to give an overview of the negotiations that made the transfer of the archive to the KDC possible, and Dr. Andrea M. Pérez González (Radboud Institute for Culture & History) introduced the research behind the exhibition, explaining how the photographs form part of a broader project to study and digitize an imperial archive from a decolonial lens. Guests, including researchers, diplomats, and members of the Chilean and Dutch communities, engaged in an informal discussion about the relevance of this material for understanding the circulation of images between Europe and Latin America.
Archives like this remind us that history is not only written in words, but also in the silent gestures of those who looked (and were looked at), framed, and preserved within the image. María de las Nieves’s photographs invite us to look back, not to repeat the gaze, but to question it — Andrea M. Pérez González
Photography as a bridge between continents and histories
The exhibition highlighted the potential of photography to connect histories across continents and to question how Europe looked at the world in the early 20th century. It also drew attention to the role of archives in restoring forgotten or overlooked perspectives within that history. The event marked the beginning of a broader collaboration between Radboud University and the Embassy of Chile, with plans to include these photographs in a digital archive and to develop future cultural and educational exchanges in 2026.
From left to right: Prof. Dr. Paul van Geest (Professor of Church History and Theology, Tilburg University), Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme (Head of the Bourbon-Parma family), H.E. Jaime Moscoso Valenzuela (Ambassador of Chile to The Netherlands), Dr. Andrea M. Pérez González (Curator and Assistant Professor of Hispanic Literature, Principal Investigator of the Bourbon de Parme photographic archive, Radboud University), Prof. Dr. Brigitte Adriaensen (Chair of Spanish and Latin American Literature and Culture, Radboud University), Constanza Lobos (Student Assistant and MA student at Radboud University)
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