The article discusses the photographs made by Catholic missionaries in the Alto Río Negro-Vaupés region. The text offers a brief inventory of the images and their themes and analyzes the photographs by making a confrontation between the images and the texts that accompany them in publications such as the press, books and magazines in Colombia and Brazil. The absence of other regional actors such as white rubber workers conveys the idea that the missions are part of an isolated world and makes this source a limited material for the understanding of regional historical processes. Likewise, the low appearance of female religious and images on the border reveal missionary androcentrism and the emphasis on its role as a driver of values on the national borders.Keywords: photography, missions, Amazon basin, indigenous people, Alto Río Negro-Vaupés.