Written documents have been a predominant way of disseminating and socializing social scientist’s research over the last century. Hence, the veracity and focus of the work done in these disciplines have an historical relationship with this form of documentation. Almost simultaneously, photography emerged as another mean to capture details and events on social research. The historical content that images can condense and offer, leads us to critically question their role as documents. This article proposes that images are not only a form of disseminating anthropological knowledge, but also are objects of cultural reflection. In this sense, this paper analyses four value metaphors in the transformation of the relationships between indigenous communities and the Colombian state, by exploring the explanatory potential of images as source documents.