High school students

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Photograph by Freda Leinwand. [463 West Street, Studio 229G, New York, NY 10014].

Women's rights demonstrations

General note: Title and date provided by Freda Leinwand.

Supermarket delivery boys

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Photograph by Freda Leinwand. [463 West Street, Studio 229G, New York, NY 10014].

High school student in St. Patrick's Day parade

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Credit must be given to Freda Leinwand from Monkmeyer Press Photo Service.

Teenage girl sitting on the beach

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Photograph by Freda Leinwand. [463 West Street, Studio 229G, New York, NY 10014].

Women at work: teenage photographer working in darkroom.

Inscription: Verso: Women at work: miscellaneous occupations. Rebecca Cooke, teenage photographer, New York.

The War at Home

The reform of cities spaces and housing has been a key issue with campaigners on the left for more than a century. These campaigns have found allies in the work of socially committed photographers from Jacob Riis at the turn of the twentieth century to Margaret Morton and Camilo Jose Vergara today. Globally the current phase of neo-liberalism has brought its own issues to the city as ‘regeneration’ strategies dispossess the urban poor in areas that are potentially lucrative to real estate development. In this process known as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ large profits are accumulated in the process of dispossessing people of their land, rights and homes. Central to the theoretical component of this paper, is an interrogation of contemporary ideas on the production and photographic representation of urban space. The research hence questions photography’s ability to make ‘legible’ the key drivers of today’s emergent terrains and to visualize their connections to the networks of power and capital that articulate the current political economy (Sassen 2011:36). One strand here will be the ‘fleshing out’ of the cultural practices behind photographers mediating urban development (Jones 2013: 1.2). Alongside current corporate depictions historical precedents will be discussed. Photographers as far back as Charles Marville in Paris of the 1850’s have documented urban reconstruction (Kennel 2013). Often employed by those undertaking the demolition, these photographic images frequently suppress certain narratives of the unbuilding process. Acting as a propaganda tool they eliminate the impact on the lives of inhabitants or the economic realities driving the valorization of reconstruction schemes (James 2004). Reformist documentary images have also played their part in justifying large-scale urban reconstruction that involved the eventual displacement of existing communities (Rose 1997: Blaikie 2006). Focusing on the gentrification of social housing in Pendleton, Salford (Greater Manchester) the presentation will explore the artists’ own work through a critical discussion, photographic images and excerpts from site writing they’ve undertaken in the area since 2004. It asks can an alternative photographic and visual strategy provide a meaningful political counter narrative to combat persuasive corporate discourses on ‘urban revitalization’? The paper will explore strategies and techniques of witnessing and ask whether these types of record can counter neo-liberal visualizations that mediate the material transformation of city areas. Can such representations begin a critical conversation about the nature of urban change and who benefits from these transformations (Wyly 2010)? Can we develop this critical photography into a type of practice that moves beyond generalisations and talks about social relations though an ‘explicit analysis of society’ (Rosler 2004:195).

Hacia una Antropología compartida. Reflexiones, experiencias y propuestas acerca de la fotografía participativa en investigación antropológica

Este artículo tiene dos objetivos principales. En primer lugar, trazar un recorrido por las experiencias colaborativas a través de la fotografía y el video en Antropología, y en segundo lugar, contextualizar y mostrar los resultados de una investigación realizada recientemente sobre proyectos de fotografía participativa impulsados desde colectivos de fotógrafos documentales. Para estos objetivos me he centrado en trabajos pioneros y en autores que han puesto a prueba este tipo de metodologías con niños y adolescentes, escenario de mi trabajo de campo. Esta investigación, que está en sus comienzos, pretende buscar sinergias con otros profesionales y poder así establecer teorías y colaboraciones de cara a próximos proyectos de investigación aplicada a través del uso de los medios audiovisuales.

Shared Photography: (Photo)journalism and political mobilisation in Rio de Janeiro's favelas

One of the most important civic phenomena emerging from favelas in Rio de Janeiro today is “community (photo)journalism”, which is practised by favela residents who are trained in journalistic and artistic techniques to raise critical awareness and promote political mobilisation in- and outside favelas. This paper looks at some of the work produced at one training place for community photographers, the agency-school Imagens do Povo (“Images of the People”) in Nova Holanda, a favela located in Rio’s North Zone. Using an ethnographic approach, this article first provides an account of the working practices of the School and its photographers. This is followed by a discussion of a small sample of their photographic work, for which we employ a social semiotic paradigm of image analysis. This methodological synergy provides insights into how these journalists document long-term structural as well as “spectacular” violence in favelas, while at the same time striving to capture some of the “beauty” of these communities. The paper concludes that this form of photographic work constitutes an important step towards a more analytical brand of journalism with different news values that encourage a more context-sensitive approach to covering urban violence and favela life.

KEYWORDS: alternative media, Imagens do Povo, multimodality, news values, photojournalism.

Recuperación y difusión de los archivos fotográficos de la arquitectura moderna en el Ecuador para el desarrollo de un patrimonio visual

Los arquitectos de la época moderna en el Ecuador consideraron a la fotografía como un elemento importante para registrar y difundir sus obras. El presente trabajo se basa en esta importancia, centrándose en la documentación fotográfica de la arquitectura moderna ecuatoriana. Para la realización de esta tesis se partió de la contextualización del tema, dando a conocer cómo se desarrolló la fotografía y cómo ésta se ligó a la arquitectura en diferentes países de América y Europa. A continuación se realizó una investigación acerca de la fotografía de arquitectura moderna del país, de los diferentes archivos fotográficos, las publicaciones y los fotógrafos de la época en Cuenca, Guayaquil y Quito. Luego del proceso investigativo, se seleccionaron dos fotógrafos principales: RolfBlomberg y Christoph Hirtz. Se analizaron sus obras fotográficas, basándose en criterios de valor de la buena fotografía de arquitectura. Posteriormente, por medio de las imágenes se analizaron las modificaciones que han sufrido, hasta la actualidad, las obras arquitectónicas y su entorno. El trabajo permitió recopilar información que se encontraba dispersa. Para su difusión se creó una base de datos, que está a disposición como medio de consulta para futuras investigaciones. Esta base consta de toda la información recopilada de los fotógrafos ecuatorianos de arquitectura moderna que se pudo encontrar en los diferentes archivos.

Babxel: búsqueda multilingüe

La Web 2.0 ha tenido un enorme éxito gracias a la posibilidad de una interacción dinámica por parte del usuario, ya no sólo a la hora de participar en elementos colaborativos, como puedan ser los foros, sino en compartir/añadir contenido a la Web. Dos ejemplos claros de este paradigma son YouTube y Flickr. El primero hospeda la mayor parte de los vídeos que podemos encontrar en Internet, y el segundo ha creado la mayor comunidad de fotógrafos existente en la red. Ambos servicios funcionan de una forma similar, el usuario es el que aporta contenidos junto a una información asociada al mismo. Al ser comunidades internacionales, la información añadida por el usuario se realiza en diversos idiomas, por lo que la búsqueda de recursos multimedia en estos sitios es dependiente del idioma de la consulta. En este artículo, presentamos Babxel, un sistema de recuperación de información multimedia y multilingüe, nacido como proyecto de fin de carrera de Ingeniería Informática, como extensión y mejora de FlickrBabel. Babxel aprovecha la capacidad de traducción multilingüe automática para generar más resultados de búsqueda relacionado con la consulta del usuario, resultados que se obtienen de las plataformas mencionadas anteriormente.

Hybridity, communism and the avant-garde: Irena Blühová and Tina Modotti

This investigation compares the work of Irena Blühová and Tina Modotti between 1924 and 1936 based on ideas of cultural hybridity, photographic theory and social and Marxist art history. Centred on the premise that they worked in similar socio- political environments, shared common biographical points and were some of the first modernist women photographers in their region, a number of aspects relating to their work are examined in relation to their socio-political background. Selected works by Blühová and Modotti are analysed and compared, making apparent that, whilst they start photographing with different ulterior motives, thematically their work is moving into a similar direction from around 1926. Partly, this is due to their involvement with the communist party and the links between politics and photography on an international scale; partly to the fact that they share a concern for the culture of the countries they worked in. These concerns are expanded upon by the fact that both Blühová and Modotti intermediate between the national and the international, the aesthetic, social and the political within their local contexts, which forms distinct similarities in their work.