2025/04/03 by Malte Gembus · 1 voice
Psychology · Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation #Anthropological Studies and Insights
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00664677.2025.2481843
openalex publication_date 2025/04/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article explores how young people in the Guatemalan diaspora in Chiapas engage with photography to express their relationship to memory and the past. It is based on long-term ethnographic research that started in 2017 in a town called La Gloria (Chiapas Mexico) and has since expanded to the United States. The article gives the reader an idea of how memory is being expressed, triggered, and expanded through engagement with photography, which includes taking photos, looking at photos and talking about photos. The article explores the private and public functions of photos and what happens when they are taken out of context. By reflecting on a photo exhibition organised with a group of young people I argue that photos play an integral part in the processes of collective memory in La Gloria and that they produce sociality when taken into the public realm, as a reminder of the residents’ shared past (in an increasingly ruptured social landscape).