Thirteenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This is a research project in visual arts to make visible the photographic practices carried out by minorities and groups that are on the margins of professional artistic production. To do this, it uses genealogical analysis of collective practices and local experiences that use the photographic medium to mobilize reflections on identity. The project privileges aspects of analysis and research methodologies that include visualities as an important part in the production of meanings over representations of identity. It takes up the thought of authors such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Prathiba Parmar and Enrique Dussel who advocate research that privileges “the gaze” of those who are mainly in the place of the subaltern. Thanks to the proliferation and increasingly wide use of digital capture devices (phones, tablets, cameras, etc.), photographic practices have become a powerful means of expression that communities use to convey new aesthetic nuances, reflections, and claims around identity. From this perspective, the concept of transphotography is used in this research to point out the use that minorities (individuals, groups and communities) have made of the photographic medium, with the aim of making political expressions and struggles visible from their own place of enunciation. According to the above, this project contributes to the political right that individuals have to create and mobilize symbolic representations that contribute to the recognition and dignity of communities and their discourses.