ideas of context and the photographic experience
Homestay with Adrian and Rosalea in Amaru, Peru
The study of visual representation is the study of power. Through the investigation of how photographs are produced, interpreted, circulated, appropriated, displayed, and reproduced, acts of agency and decision-making are revealed. In this post, I’d like to describe a situation of image production I encountered during a homestay visit in the Amaru community, located outside of Pisaq, Perú, in the Sacred Valley just beyond the city of Cusco. This scene is a clear example of the complicated nature of context when trying to understand the production of images. While a single physical photograph may be the recording of a fraction of a second of light bouncing off of subjects before a lens, the production of the photograph may have spanned a much longer length of time. More people than just the subjects and the photographer may have experienced the production of the image, and may have acted or influenced this process. This is exactly what occurred during a photographic experience in Amaru.
I first discovered the possibility of visiting Amaru while passing by a restaurant on the plaza in Pisaq. A pamphlet was posted on the wall, which detailed–in English–the homestay program in Amaru. At the time I was living in Cusco, attending Quechua classes in the mornings, and investigating uses of photography in various quotidian circumstances in and around Cusco. The homestay program attracted me because, as I learned from the pamphlet, the host families in Amaru were Quechua-speakers. I noted a webpage advertised on the brochure, which sits on the Peru Treks tourism company website. Both Peru Treks and Adrian–president of the Amaru homestay group–told me that the program is a community initiative, and that the tourism company receives no fiscal benefit for the promoting it does for the group. Peru Treks served as a mediator, and helped me organize a homestay visit for a friend and me.
madres de Plaza de Mayo
Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, Argentina, marching with photos of their disappeared
Although repression and systematic violence had already begun in the years preceding, 1976 marks the official beginning of Argentina’s Dirty War. While a truth commission has estimated that about 10,000 civilians were “disappeared” by the government, others — like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo / Mothers of Plaza de May0 — say that more like 30,000 people were killed or disappeared due to state-sponsored violence. It is estimated that about 500 children were also kidnapped in the process. The military dictatorship held power until 1983, but it is only recently that those responsible are beginning to be held accountable.
Photos of the Disappeared / los Desaparecidos
Mothers of those taken by the government began marching once a week in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, which sits on the Plaza de Mayo. They held photographs–many were posters made from id photos–of their loved ones who had disappeared, and demanded that the government answer to where they had been taken. Over the years the movement has gone through changes, such as a split across ideological lines, but mothers (and grandmothers) still march in the plaza and ask, Dónde están? Many women have dedicated their lives to not only continuing to search for the identities of their children which have seemed to dissolved into the air, but also to educate others of past human rights abuses. On the Asociación de Madres de Plaza de Mayo’s website, you can see the diverse and active efforts they are making to raise awareness to what has happened. The society is far from healed, and photographs continue to play a integral role in political and social struggles.
In 1985, a film was made about a kidnapped child who was adopted by a military family. Watch a clip from The Official Story / La Historia Oficial.
If you are interested, here are declassified documents showing that the US supported this Dirty War; you can also read these more recently released State Department Files regarding the war, all of which are found on the National Security Archive‘s website.
Relevant Info:
Website of the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo
Website of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo
Website of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, english version
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, by Jacobo Timerman
AjA Project
Founded in 2000, AjA Project runs participatory photography programs in multiple locations, and also builds collaborative projects with partner agencies. In San Diego–its home base–the group runs Journey, in which refugee and immigrant youth learn about visual storytelling in after-school workshops. Aja has recently begun a Social Justice through Lincoln High School’s Center for Social Justice. It has also created a Youth Advisory Council which “provides 10-12 program graduates with an additional yearlong curriculum that focuses on leadership development through advanced photographic studies and in depth social essays.” In Bogotá, Colombia, the program Disparando Cámaras para la Paz seeks to give internally displaced youth a creative way to interpret their situation and make statements about their experiences. Record of Truth takes place in a refugee camp along the Burma/Thailand border and also seeks to provide youth with a method of working through the challenges that face them.
AjA Project’s stated mission asserts that “youth affected by war, migration and displacement have – by their choices, their actions and expressions – a unique opportunity to raise global awareness and to break the cycle of violence. In response to this, the AjA Project provides innovative photography-based educational programs that empower youth to explore cultural identity and develop communication and leadership skills, for the purpose of fostering self-sufficiency, both for the individual and their community.”
For more information and to see images from the programs, visit the AjA Project website.
la ciudad de los fotógrafos
Here is the trailer to the incredible film La Ciudad de los Fotógrafos (the city of photographers), directed by Sebastián Moreno. The film centers around photographers attempting to capture what was happening in Santiago de Chile after the violent military coup in 1973 and the long and destructive regime that followed.
on photographic empowerment
For many, the Academy Award-winning film Born into Brothels was an introduction to thinking about access to the photographic technology, the potential for the technology to be used as a tool for education, and how the subject position and worldview of the photographer influences the photographs that they produce. In this film, a New-York based photographer who is working on a photography series in Calcutta’s red light district befriends a group of children living there. Responding to their interest in her work, the photographer gives each child a camera and begins to give them photo classes. This film chronicles the childrens’ lives over the course of the workshops, as they explore picture-making, learn different ways of interpreting what they see, and weigh the options in their futures.
But these kinds of projects did not begin with Born into Brothels, and certainly do not all have the same intentions or consequences. Interestingly, many projects claim that they are “empowering” people by giving them access to a camera and teaching them about being a photographer. Is this idealistic? Is this an oversimplification? Or is this a just reflection of what happens? Or, rather, part of what could happen?
Interestingly, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Venice Arts (non-profit organization) have co-founded the Institute for Photographic Empowerment (IPE). The stated mission is “to support the study and practice of participant–produced documentary projects in photography, film, and digital media.” In doing so, it aims to provide “new opportunities for the traditionally disenfranchised to use their own images to communicate directly with policymakers about the social issues that profoundly affect their lives: HIV/AIDS, poverty, environmental degradation.” The IPE is a point of encounter for photography projects from around the world, where students, teachers, researchers, practitioners and the public can discuss pertinent topics and share information. It seems that the ultimate goal for most projects referenced on the site, in the broadest sense, is social change.
While this sounds exciting and hopeful, the politics of representation are complex and oftentimes tricky. This is not to say that they should not be confronted, but that care and diligence need be used as these politics are unfolded and interrogated. The word “empowerment” itself is incredibly loaded, and carries layers of meanings leftover from previous uses. For some, it may imply that a subject initially did not have power, and thus could be the recipient of empowerment. For others it might be a more personal, self-confidence instilling kind of empowerment. Still others might be be excited by the idea of political empowerment, which might intersect with recently emerging discussions about the concept of “visual citizenship.”
To be sure, there is a lot of power that has been ascribed to the photographic technology. But I do not believe that the medium inherently or always functions the same way, as many scholars have pointed out (see Pinney, Poole, Lydon, Edwards). Similar to other technologies like cellphones, computers and fax machines, photography is a tool that can be used for different purposes and with varying ramifications. It is a technology in which many modalities of power exist: the power inscribed in access to technology and technological knowledge, the power to hold the camera and create a visual representation, the power to set up or construct an image, the power to distribute or display a photograph, the power to title, caption, or frame a photograph, the power to view an image, interpret its meaning and construct a narrative about it. Given these modalities, there are many ways to “empower” oneself by using photography, and many ways for that “empowerment” to be drowned out by a subsequent set of actions. A person may not necessarily have to pick up a camera themselves to be empowered, but also, even if she is able to take a picture, it is possible that she may not become or feel empowered.
As a previous practitioner in a social photography project, I do believe that there are great benefits and positive opportunities that may come from photography workshops. But I also believe that the concept of empowerment should be never assumed but constantly questioned, for it is in that dialogue that we may achieve clarity in how, if possible, it may be fostered.
photo wallahs
In 1992, documentary filmmakers Judith and David MacDougall produced Photo Wallahs, which looks at different social practices of photography in Mussoorie, India.
Over the course of the film, we are shown many kinds of contexts in which photographs take on a variety of meanings and different kinds of value. From family photo albums to studio portraiture, posed tourist shots and street photography, a body of photography emerges that is a product of India, but also shares qualities with the photography produced in many other places.
Writing about photography is one way of attempting to understand the medium, but creating a film about the technology is not common. By filming scenes of photographic production as well as interviews with subjects and photographers, the MacDougalls have been able to approach photographic production, consumption and circulation in a holistic and thought-provoking way.
Read this interview with David MacDougall about Photo Wallahs.
uncovering Guatemala’s archive
Newly-discovered Guatemalan police records fill dozens of rooms in five buildings on an active police compound in Zone 6, downtown Guatemala City. (Photo - © Daniel Hernández-Salazar)
In 1996, Guatemala’s 36-year civil war may have come to an official end, but the country turned to face a new set of problems. It has been estimated that about 200,000 people had died or disappeared over the course of the war, most of whom were civilians. The war itself has origins that stretch far back into history, and even though the fighting is understood to have been between the Guatemalan government and “insurgents,” each side involved a series of participants who had their own motivations and desired outcomes. The Guatemalan military played an influential and key role before and throughout the civil war, asserting its visions within the government either through pressure or blatant control. The US government and the CIA also supported the Guatemalan government and the military forces in both overt and covert ways. At different moments during the war, the insurgents included different groups, including middle-class intellectuals and military personnel in disagreement with the Guatemalan military. By the end of the war, the insurgency was largely pushed by the guerrilla movement known as the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), which was primarily made up of highland indigenous peasants.
Dozens of logbooks and ledgers have been found, containing the names and photos of countless detainees. This one is dated July 24, 1967. (Photo by National Security Archive)
On December 29, 1996, the UN helped negotiate the signing of the Peace Accords. A truth commission was initiated as a way to help heal the division between the two sides. But while victims and witnesses began to describe countless killings, abuses and forced disappearances committed by state forces, the government denied accountability. The military was uncooperative, and officials insisted that no records had been kept.
This was proven to be false in 2005, when members from Guatemala’s human-rights prosecutor’s office stumbled upon an enormous archive of the Guatemala’s former National Police (which had been dissolved in 1997) being stored at a local police base in Guatemala City. The information that has been—and is still being—revealed confirms the involvement of the government in innumerous massacres, disappearances and other human-rights abuses.
In December, 2007, Kate Doyle published The Atrocity Files: Deciphering the archives of Guatemala’s dirty war in Harper’s magazine. Doyle is currently a senior analyst at The National Security Archive, in charge of both the Guatemala Documentation Project as well as The Mexico Project. In the article, Doyle explains how police officials inserted id photos into log books to keep track of prisoners.
"There are thousands of photographs of the living and the dead." (Photo - © Daniel Hernández-Salazar)
Thousands of loose photographs were found among the decaying records, along with hundreds of rolls of film which are now being developed. It is estimated that 75 million pages of material are included in the immense archive. In this instance, it appears that photography’s indexicality, or the technology’s perceived ability to faithfully capture a reproduction of that which was once in front of the camera, will be relied upon to make serious deductions about the government’s actions during the war. Keep in touch with the project to see what kinds of photographs are revealed as the film is developed and the archive—what seems to be the most expansive found from any of Latin America’s dirty wars—is explored.
Guatemala Booklist:
Shattered Hope: the Guatemalan revolution and the United States, 1944-1954, By Piero Gleijeses
The Blood of Guatemala: a history of race and nation, By Greg Grandin
Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954, By Nick Cullather
