Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The (photographic) diary is the perfect affirmation of the photographer as an individual in his will to appear naked before others. When this happens, we witness the total identification of the photographer-narrator with the model and with the observer. It is the "autobiographical (photo) pact" where exploration with language is pushed to the limit, as the inner adventure cannot be expressed with limited writing. This is how Peter Beard conceives his work, a personal commitment that is as much the cause of the photo as its object. A work of introspection in which underlies the taste for contemplation and the need to treasure memories, maximized by the photographic language through the self-portrait and the collage technique. The result is a collection of photographs of the memory of his intimacy that, piled up in his photodiaries, are but the basis of a personal story that wants to be told, perhaps also to be remembered.

In the current context of affirmation of postphotographic theses and their challenge to traditional documentary values, photographs have lost their credibility as supposed objective units of knowledge. Even so, photographic images continue to be a powerful instrument for the analysis, understanding and critical interpretation of the world and an unrivaled graphic record of time –past and present– that constantly appeals to individual and collective memory. All narration implies a process of invention of reality itself that it aims to point out: sometimes, memory is just a reflection, a mirage or an illusion of experiences, or an ideal construction that helps people images of his own amnesia. This article investigates some of these fictional memory tactics in contemporary photography.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the experiences of a group of higher education students in order to understand how they lived the construction of masculinity during their formative stage. Through A/r/tography methodology, we analyzed, using a qualitative method based on a biographical and interpretative perspectives, 72 bodygrafies performed by students of the Master of Psychopedagogy of the Universidad xxx as part of an exercise in visual self-representation. The results of the analysis allowed us to identify two great pedagogies in the construction process of masculinities: an anesthetic pedagogy and other sensitive and/or resistance pedagogy. The results obtained from the analysis of visual narratives show valuable experiences that encourage critical dialogues, from which useful guidelines are derived in order to overcome educational practices that perpetuate the model of traditional masculinity. In this way, the text reveals, by using the visual arts, a latent social reality and rises the reflection on how to promote a critical and transformative citizenship that overcome the conceptions of masculinity of traditional archetype.

This work selects and studies a series of audiovisual pieces that emerged within the Film Workshop that we currently develop at the University for the Elderly. In this pioneering experience, within the courses offered by the Complutense University of Madrid, the students make a creation that follows the experimental parameters of the audiovisual essay. The essay practice appears here as a privileged tool that the new digital contexts make possible and, in whose configuration, the fertile vital baggage of the students plays a fundamental role. The concepts on which the study is based highlight common aspects shared by the family album and the audiovisual essay as means of representation that expand the individual experience to a collective and historical level. Personal and collective memory, as well as the family album, are decisive elements in rescuing an analog time that is reformulated through narratives, often autobiographical, characterized by experiences such as the reuse of the photographic archive, the exploration of one's own identity, or the analysis of those historical and individual records with a critical eye, turning our elders and their experience into active protagonists of their respective works.

Abstract This research focuses its interest on the textual analysis of the meaning mechanisms of a photograph taken by Anatolii Stepanov, a Ukrainian war photojournalist. The visual text object of study stands out for the fruitful and polyhedral semanticity that it encloses in its plastic forms, figurative expressions and structural contents. Due to this, it is a paradigmatic example of the author's work and, at the same time, of the conflict between the two nations that it portrays. The structuralist semiotic analysis has been the tool used to elucidate and understand what it says and, above all, how it says those thematic aspects that it raises. The results of the study indicate that the ideological axes of the war between Ukraine and Russia; the violence of nature, in general, and human violence, in particular; the brutality of an armed conflict; the love towards a snatched nation and the struggle of the weakest against the strongest are materialized themes in the plastic and figurative level.

In recent years we have witnessed the release of documentaries such as World War II in Color, (Jonathan Martin, 2009), They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson, 2018) or España en dos trincheras. La Guerra Civil en colores (Francesc Escribano, Lluís Carrizo, 2016), characterized by the colorization of filmic materials originally recorded in black and white. The recent publication of the work El color del tiempo. A New Visual History of the World 1850-1960 (Amaral and Jones, 2021), which includes the publication of 200 photographs of high historical and documentary value, originally in black and white, raises a reflection on the use of color as an expressive and narrative resource in the fields of photography and film. In this paper, we consider that the use of black and white is a discursive option loaded with meanings, which in no case should be interpreted as a lack of photographic expression (Freeman, 2005; Marzal, 2007; Edwards, 2019). It is argued that the fashion for colorization in film and photography should be placed in relation to the current context of the expansion of the so-called deep fake, a technique that decontextualize the production of images.

In this article we analyse the intersection between photography, narrative complexity and memory in post-classical cinema. We focus on the use of photography as a narrative resource in the so-called mind-game films; specifically, those starring amnesiac characters. In the era of post-photography, post-truth and fake news, contemporary cinema invites us to be suspicious of the photographic image. If this usually appears in cinema as an indication of an accurate memory or as irrefutable proof of a fact, mind-game films turn it into a misleading resource, as it contributes to confuse the protagonist and, with him, the spectator. We take as a basis the theoretical framework that addresses the main axes of the text (mind-game films, memory and post-photography) and we apply semiotic textual analysis as a methodology to focus on Abre los ojos (Alejandro Amenábar, 1996), Los otros (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001), El maquinista (Brad Anderson, 2006), Hierro (Gabe Ibáñez, 2009) and Sin identidad (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2011) as case studies.

En este artículo se investiga sobre los recuerdos, el olvido y la memoria a través de la creación fotográfica, performativa y videográfica de David Catá. La obra de este artista gira en torno a su autobiografía, contada a partir del archivo fotográfico doméstico y del álbum familiar. Su proceso de creación parte de la memoria colectiva y de las experiencias, lugares y poéticas de la memoria individual que construye recuerdos fotográficos. Su proceso de creación, en constante fricción con su vida, pretende fotografiar el olvido. Para ello, también recurre a la performance, a través de la cual, emplea sus manos como soporte, cosiendo sobre ellas personas, familiares, espacios afectivos que interfieren en la vida del artista. Esta investigación ha sido el resultado de meses de documentación y creación del discurso de comisariado en la Universidad de Guanajuato (México). En este montaje expositivo, en formato fotográfico y audiovisual, el artista narra en primera persona, como las fotografías activan memorias y recuerdos personales que pueden ser similares a los de los espectadores.     

Knowing the effect of photography on memory has been a topic of recurring interest. Since its invention, photography has been associated with memory and the desire to capture time, lofty aspirations that have been transformed by its uses and overcrowding. In her book Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan Sontag examines photography in the context of war, pain, and compassion, its links to the past, and its ability to shake consciences and public opinion. In this article we will review the validity of some of her approaches, attending the intersections of photography with three key concepts: memory, power and violence. The possibilities of circulation of photography, the modes of reception and production, as well as the interests to position some images and discard others, to remember some and forget others, open ethical discussions and questions that acquire relevance in the current complex scenario.

En las últimas décadas, la investigación sobre la memoria ha experimentado un gran desarrollo, tanto desde la neurociencia y la psicología como desde los estudios de ciencias sociales y humanidades. El texto El bazar de la memoria (2021), de la profesora Veronica O’Keane, trata de averiguar cómo se construyen los recuerdos y, al mismo tiempo y con la misma intensidad, cómo los recuerdos moldean a los individuos. Lógicamente la metodología de los Memory Studies, que podrían traducirse como estudios de la memoria, también ha recalado en el análisis de la fotografía y la imagen en movimiento. En este número de la revista Fotocinema, titulado Recuerdos visuales fotográficos, los autores abordan el rol que desempeña la memoria en la construcción social y, sobre todo, individual. La memoria se articula como un juego de malabares entre el recuerdo y el olvido, la posmemoria y la rememoria, lo imaginado, lo deseado, la ficción y lo documentado.