This article focuses on the tripled relation among visual culture, civil wars and national plan of the period from 1871 and 1885 in the Colombian twenty century; this implies a certain circulation of objects and types of visual illustration common both in Europe and America. The aim is to examine the visual culture in the middle of big civil conflicts and the national promotion, on the basis that the production of images, in this time, reveal: 1) a specific logic about national promotion and a reflection which became visible its contradictions; 2) the configuration of a visual culture that it’s possible to understand since international clue and 3) it becomes apparent the comprehension of national time where is strengthened a future since the common past, at the same time it is questioned, since the present characterized by the differences which imply the civil wars.