PHOTOGRAPHY A SOCIAL ACT. AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTINA E. CHAVEZ VISUAL SOCIOLOGIST AND ANTHROPOLOGIST
Abstract
Many authors have wrote about photography and society, about the principal social function of this media, as Bourdieu who said that is function is to “perpetuate and make solemn the moments of collective life” (Bourdieu: 1965). There are also studies about the social status of photography (Sontag: 1973), its historic status (Freund: 1974), its semiotic one (Barthes: 1980), o its ambiguous relation with communication and information (Perrin: 1988). But few authors studies photography as act (Dubois: 1990), and very few as social act. In this way, the social experimentation made in the neighborhood of La Goutte d’Or (XVIIIo district of París) by the Argentinean sociologist Martina E. Chávez, who lives in París, appears as very interesting to me. It was released during a participative action-research with immigrants childs and adolescents, mainly natives of West Africa, North Africa (Magreb),
Martina E. Chávez was born in Santa Clara (State of Jujuy, Argentina). After her secondary studies in Argentina, she moves to France where she first studies Political Economy in “Vincennes – Saint-Denis” University (París 8). Next, she studies Sociology and was graduated in “La Sorbonne” University (París 3). She actually works in the Visual and Sound Anthropology Department of “Denis Diderot” University (París 7), managed by Doctor Jean Arlaud.
A French social institution instructs her to implement news methods of actions with the immigrant young people, which problems center on identity and representations. These problems are added to classical problems of adolescence and social exclusion, yet very well studied and documented. The observation of these phenomenas suggests her to make a social experimentation based on a photographic workshop, which is the central theme of this article. Actually, the role of the picture as object of manipulation by mass medias and its utilization in Anthropological investigation, are always her principal points of interest.
I have interviewed her on this experimentation with adolescents, considering it as an innovating experience, not only for the medium, but also for its methodological contribution.
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References
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