PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE.
The photo has the power to remember a moment. The photo serves as a testimony, it serves as the ultimate archive. It is transferable and multipliable on a massive scale. The power in these photos, are the stories behind them. Photos serve as a medium by which the conversation of story telling occurs. Storytelling through photos transgresses literary and lingual boundaries. It serves a visual language, and one that is universal. Photos are guardians of memory.
NICARAGUA.
Susan Meiselas is a Human Rights photographer from the United States. She photographed Nicaragua during the civil war. She has used these photos not only as aesthetic works of art. She has used the photos as tools with which to create space for reinvigorating collective memories. She has returned to Nicaragua multiple times to find the individuals behind the photos, to tell stories about these people, and to display the images in a variety of ways. Her focus on human rights, humanity, a perspective often missing from photographs taken during times of war.
ARGENTINA.
Marcelo Brodsky is a visual artist and photographer from Argentina, with an emphasis on human rights. Memory is a significant component of Marcelo's work he uses collage, and textual intervention to interrogate questions of human rights within photos. One of his most personal works consists of photos from his childhood, and a class photo. He uses the photo to facilitate conversations about state enforced disappearance during the Dirty War in Argentina. By invoking storytelling, and memory in such a personal way, he opens space to talk about disappearance in a way that hopefully moves people towards taking preventative measures in the present.
