TODAS SOMOS NOSOTRAS

Making self-portrait is a common practice in many cultures all over the world. It is a testimony of the own existence and a fundamental expression of our humanity. With the invention of photography, portraits were democratized and archives of several natures began to be generated in order to record human development, historic events or important moments in daily life. Nowadays, with the digital image and the technology boom, the photograph is anchored in virtuality. This detracts printing on paper because it has changed its material and preserving conditions. Since this phenomenon affects how we approach images, I intend to inquire into this approximation to the photography by analysing a collection of portraits from the 20th century in order to ask ourselves how these ones do or don’t get into our collective imagination.

Of the entire universe of analogue photograph, my investigation will focus on finding and reactivating portraits of women of the past century, having as a central theme gender and archive approaches. Why portraits of strangers are a matter of concern? Where are these photographs located? Could these anonymous images become an archive of a feminine lineage? I attempt to claim that all women are connected no matter our geographic origin because there is a common ground preceding us: patriarchy and its hegemony. From a decolonial perspective, my project intends to decolonize the way we look at images in order to build feminine collective memories and to give importance today to those stories that are not part of the official history.

The dialogue with women of the past century through portraits regards the photograph as a witness of the places and roles the women were assigned in history: a social class, access and omission history. To value the feminist motto “the personal is political” and to move photographs of women from personal to public archives is a political act. The purpose of this project is to merge from photographic findings diverse encounter points for creating a transgenerational archive of women, in which, from present times, our near or remote ancestresses are recognized.