Online course: Photography, power and counterpower in Latin America

From its origins, photography has been linked to projects of social control and classification: states used it to document, monitor, and construct national identities; the media employed it to establish legitimized versions of social conflicts; dominant sectors transformed it into an instrument of selective visibility, where certain bodies, spaces, and experiences were included in the frame while others were deliberately excluded. Understanding photography, then, also implies understanding its silences and absences.

But the history of photography in Latin America is not only the history of the power it portrays. It is also the history of those who appropriated the camera to produce other images: photographs of strikes and demonstrations, portraits of silenced communities, records of state repression, images that circulated clandestinely or survived as evidence and memory. Photography has been, in our region, a field of ongoing symbolic struggle.

This perspective demands that we consider the photographic image in its entirety: not only as a visual object but also as a social process. A photograph is the result of technical and aesthetic decisions, but also of material conditions of production, relationships between photographers, media, and institutions, and political contexts that enable certain framing and prohibit others.

Photographic images are not simply records of reality: they are constructions that condense power relations, disputes over representation, and struggles for visibility. In the Latin American context, photography has historically operated as a field of tension between those who hold the power to show and those who strive to be seen on their own terms.

GENERAL PURPOSE

To provide theoretical and methodological tools for the socio-historical analysis of photography, with special emphasis on its political dimension and its role in the construction of hegemonies and counter-hegemonies in Latin America.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

That the students:

● Identify the main theoretical and methodological approaches to image analysis, incorporating tools from visual semiology, visual history, and communication studies.

● Reflect on the modes of production, circulation and reception of photographs at different historical moments.

● Highlight various experiences in which the potential of images as part of the construction of hegemonies and counter-hegemonies is observed.

● Study the photographs inscribed on various media (newspapers, magazines, books, blogs, social networks, walls) and their communicational, political, social, and historical implications.

• CLASS 1: Methodological tools for image analysis
  Prof. Cora Gamarnik
  Modality: synchronous
  
  Conceptual summary of the class: Elements of image analysis. Basic principles of visual semiotics. Socio-historical approaches to photography. Images. Icons. How do we look at a photograph? What intellectual operations do we employ when analyzing an image?
  
  
• CLASS 2: Photography, media, networks and power.
  Prof. Cora Gamarnik
  Modality: synchronous
  
  Conceptual synthesis of the class: Regimes of visibility. Intersection between media history, images, and political history. Visual experiences and power struggles. Uses of official images, construction of images as counterpower.
  
  
• CLASS 3: Photography and social action
  Prof. Cora Gamarnik
  Modality: synchronous
  
  Conceptual summary of the class: The power of a photograph. Images, media, social conflicts. The power of photography to promote social change and its potential to expose problems with visible impact. Under what conditions does a photograph manage to move, mobilize, denounce, or transform? When, on the other hand, is that same power diluted, neutralized, or co-opted by the logic of spectacle and consumption? Social media as a new regime of visibility and contemporary visual overabundance.
  
  
• CLASS 4: Visual Activism
  Prof. Cora Gamarnik
  Modality: synchronous
  
  Conceptual summary of the class: Photography as a political instrument. Photography in art-activism actions. Photography and social protests. Visual dimension in public space. Photographic practices that not only document social protest but also actively participate in it. Images and social intervention.
  
  
• CLASS 5: Brazil
  Prof. Ana Mauad
  Mode: synchronous / asynchronous
  
  Conceptual synthesis of the class: Photography, history, and politics in Brazil. Public uses of photographic images in republican Brazil. Photo-icons and the construction of historical memory. Case study: image, death, and social protest during the Brazilian dictatorship. Photography and social movements in contemporary Brazil.
  
  
• CLASS 6: Mexico
  Prof. Alberto Del Castillo
  Mode: synchronous / asynchronous
  
  Conceptual summary of the class: Photography and Power in Mexico. Images of the Mexican Revolution and their political use in the construction of the nation-state. Press photography, censorship, and freedom of expression. Photography in social movements: from 68 to the present. Images, memory, and justice in contemporary Mexico.

The course will be delivered online, combining synchronous and asynchronous components. Over the course of one month, a total of six classes will be offered: four live sessions with the instructor (synchronous) and two recorded sessions available for asynchronous viewing.

Live classes will be held on the following days Tuesday at 18pm ARG through the Zoom platform, which will allow direct interaction between participants. In addition, students will have access to exclusive materials, available in the virtual classroom, that will complement the content covered in each session.

The final assessment will consist of an individual online questionnaire, which will be a necessary condition for passing the course.