At the end of the 19th century Argentina and Chile occupied the patagonian territory, seeking to move or subject the original peoples living there. Both states deposited with the Salesian mission the tasks of evangelising and ‘civilising’ the dominated groups. The process involved the construction of an image of the ‘other’, of the ‘wild’, using printed photographic images circulating both within national territories and towards Europe. The Salesian mysioners, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, used photographs as a raw material for postcards, those which were put into circulation as an ‘artefact’ to spread mysionary action in ‘distant’ and ‘exotic’ places. His photographs of selk ', kaweskar and yámanas are recreations of mental images, built in their country of origin, collecting the old dichotomy of good and bad wild. It is a narrative that presents some aspects of the social, economic, cultural reality in which the mysioners operate. But at the same time, he also concedes, denies, giving a partial, biased look at that reality. The photographs analysed in this work are built from a Eurocentric and colonialist perspective.