AUGMENTED HISTORIES: In conversation
Hector René Membreno-Canales, Robert Pluma, Village Live and Nicole Marroquin | United States
In 2018, our Photography Expanded program ran a Counter Histories lab focused on projects that question official histories, disrupt the power structures embedded in archives, and explore the radical possibilities of alternative narratives. During that year's Photography Expanded symposium, several of the lab participants came together to discuss their projects' engagement with immersive reality as a means of presenting alternative histories.
“I’m hoping that by documenting and photographing these plinths after the monument has been removed, it creates an alternative narrative to who’s in charge to what public spaces should look like.”
The Feminist Memory Project
Nepal Picture Library | Nepal
The Feminist Memory Project by Nepal Picture Library seeks to create a visual archive of women’s movements in Nepal. Through gathered archival photographs, other ephemera, and oral histories from around Nepal that capture women in pivotal moments of Nepali history, it consolidates contributions made by pioneering figures who remain marginalized in our male dominated historiographies.
“To become public is to be seen and accounted for in history. The journey of Nepali women from within the boundaries of domesticity to the openness of public life is a move from obscurity to memory.”
ONE DAY WE’LL UNDERSTAND
Sim Chi Yin | Singapore
This work takes Sim’s family history as a point of departure and explores a hidden chapter of the Cold War in Asia: the leftist resistance of the Malayan Communists against the British colonial government from 1948 to 1960. Following her grandfather’s deportation trail, she studied the circumstances people—like her grandfather—found themselves in and their ideas, ideals and the choices they made at that time when the geopolitical intersected with the personal and familial, sometimes with tragic results.
The Longing Of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been BrokeN
Rehab Eldalil | Egypt
Like many indigenous communities around the world, Bedouins of Sinai are commonly misrepresented in the media, portrayed as isolated from, and a threat to, modern society. Throughout it all, they remain the keepers of the land—protecting it from harm as it has provided them with blessings in return. Both a personal and collaborative project, The Longing Of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken draws from Eldalil’s own estranged Bedouin ancestry, exploring the notion of belonging and the interconnectedness of people and land.
“I believe it’s a common human emotion to seek a definition of one’s identity, yet its complexity is often ignored, creating flattened labels and othering. With this dialogue, I’m building a bridge between the voices of the Bedouin community and western audiences who have long seen the Bedouins and many other indigenous communities through a romanticized gaze.”
Europa
Thomas Dworzak | Europe
Contrary to most photography books, Europa was made for practical use by migrants and refugees, and as an educational tool to inform, engage, and facilitate community exchange. The book is free and distributed primarily through NGOS and community centers.
OCCUPIED PLEASURES
Tanya Habjouqa | Palestine
More than four million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, where the political situation regularly intrudes upon the most mundane of moments. Movement is circumscribed and threat of violence often hangs overhead. This creates the strongest of desires for the smallest of pleasures, and a sharp sense of humour about the absurdities that a 47-year occupation has produced.
LAst LEtters
Billy H.C. Kwok | Taiwan
Last Letters is a visual and archival investigation into a dark chapter of Taiwan’s hidden history, political past & taboos and societal amnesia during political suppression and dictatorship of 1949-1991. The series speaks to the hidden traumas and memories that have passed on, one generation to the next. Underlying these excavated memories are the absent presences—which leave their traces in the past, present and future.
Hard Times are Fighting Times
Alice Proujansky | United States
In Hard Times are Fighting Times, Proujansky works through her father’s FBI file during the years he was with the radical group the Weathermen. Created through COINTELPRO, a project targeting political organizations, her dad’s FBI file and others like it were intended to sow fear, divide movements, and fracture allegiances. In researching, curating and photographing this archive, she subverts the intention of this thick file—shifting its meaning from division to connection, and forging a valued closeness with her father.
“The story of their activism is the story of me...This past inspires and moves me, but it can also be doctrinaire and oppressive. How can I live up to these expectations? Do I want to? Which parts of these perspectives will I keep, and what will I discard?”
Luz del Día: Copyrighting the Light of Day
Stephanie Mercedes | United States
In the face of a copyright bill that would retroactively erase all images of the Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) from the public domain, Mercedes layers, crops, reverts, and X’s out images—thus gaining the legal rights to personally copyright the altered images and return them to the public domain.
