For decades, the social sciences have been analyzing what we call the “fixed image” as a system of both cultural representation and cultural production. Within this framework, the study of photography (as well as the study of its relationships with other discursive formations) has led to the understanding and interpretation of various ways of representing certain alterities – social and/or ethnic – in different times and different historical and iconographic contexts. This article is an analysis of the visual absence and/or presence of “Chilean” indigenous groups (Mapuches, Fueguinos, Andinos) as well as the specific types of representation that are operating in the photography of these ethnic alterities, using what is specifically photographic –in other words, the processes involved in producing a photographic image– as a starting point, and by comparing diverse corpuses of images.