Author
Micha Pollok
Title
What a spectacle, stop it! Examining the repertoire of migratory representation in photography
Universität Osnabrück, 2019
Abstract
With the rise of a migratory public discourse, photographs picturing migrants and migratory experiences are an omnipresent theme of visual perception. This thesis aims to explore the repertoire of possibilities that migratory photography offers. It is mainly driven by the guiding line of the way in which a migrant is seen, a dialectic of (in)visibility that is inherent to any form of representation. Hereby, the dominantly perceived discourse follows the narratives of threat and victimization, deprived of human characteristics. In order to identify further approaches to migratory representation, the practical research reaches out to three photographers that have each created a photographic series picturing migrants or the migratory reality outside of the dominant frames. The conducted interviews along with the theoretical grounding disclose the
broadness of the repertoire of migratory photography, in particular the key finding that any migratory representation can be understood as one way of modulating a set of in-built dichotomies that altogether form (in)visibility of the migratory appearance.
Keywords
Migratory photograph, (in)visibilities, spectacle of the other, representation, dichotomies