PhotoDemos zine
by PhotoDemos on June 16, 2022
Image Credit: Margarita Montealegre, Sajonia (2021)
This publication brings together a range of photographic material gathered by the PhotoDemos collective throughout the last five years of project-related activity.
Formatted as a zine – to be unfolded, taken apart, and pasted onto city walls, or presented within a gallery, communal space, etc. – we hope for it to reach as wide an audience as possible, and to open up conversations about the myriad possibilities of which photography is the catalyst.
With a nod to Walter Benjamin, the zine aims to present ‘little histories’ of photography as it is actually practised in different global locations.
Prolonged ethnographic fieldwork by six researchers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Greece, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka has looked at how local communities use photography to represent individuals, families, and other identities, exploring whether this plays a role in how people express their political hopes and demands.
Included here are examples of the type of photographic work that we have encountered while conducting research. In many cases our own photographs document the context around certain photographic practices, be they formal or informal, showing how photographs are made useful, inserted into the texture of everyday life. ‘Re-photographing’ becomes a strategy in and of itself, a means of capturing various examples (and interventions), and to reflect upon their histories and identities. What might first appear like a preservationist instinct, is driven by a sustained interest in thinking through what is undoubtedly the largest element in photographic practice, yet the least considered form within the academy.