3.16. Photography, Loss & Transnational Trauma

This paper seeks to analyze photography as a resource of memory in the construction of cultural identities in Argentina, through the study of aesthetic political manifestations that took place between 1968 and 1983. Three key moments are examined: the Experimental Art Cycle and Tucumán Arde, both in 1968, and the Siluetazo in 1983, understood as aesthetic expressions of resistance and denunciation during a period of political violence marked by authoritarian governments and systematic practices of censorship directed at cultural institutions. The research focuses on photography not only as a tool of documentation, but also as an instrument for the construction of identity. The analysis draws on archival materials from the Graciela Carnevale Archive, CeDinCI, and the photographic work of Eduardo Gil. The study is organized into two sections. The first explores how the images of the artistic experiences of the late 1960s, led by the Grupo de Arte de Vanguardia Rosarino, serve as an initial approach to aesthetic political practices in Argentina. The second examines the images of the Siluetazo in 1983 as both a recovery of artistic manifestations and a means of constructing cultural identity during the democratic transition. This section also considers the first exhibition of Graphic Journalism in 1981, in order to establish a comparison between the role of photography under dictatorship and during the democratic transition. Furthermore, it reflects on the role of the contemporary photographic archive—with particular emphasis on the Graciela Carnevale Archive and the photographs of Eduardo Gil—in shaping cultural identity through photographic memory. The argument advanced is that, across the artistic practices of 1968 and 1983, photography operates as a critical site for the construction of cultural identities and of a historical subject of memory, one that traces a connective thread to broader practices of collective remembrance.

This paper examines the affective and political life of a photograph taken after the 1939 Erzincan Earthquake in Türkiye, showing a grieving woman embracing President İsmet İnönü. Published widely in newspapers and later reproduced on Turkish Red Crescent relief stamps and in Erzincan’s İnönü Monument (sculptor Ratip Aşir Acudoğlu, 1947), the image became a national emblem of compassion and unity. The woman’s words to İnönü, calling him “father,” were read in the Grand National Assembly and turned into poetry. Taking this image as a point of departure, we ask how the circulation and reinterpretation of a post-disaster photograph shape political subjectivities in Türkiye. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of affective economies and Lauren Berlant’s notions of national sentimentality and intimate publics, we explore how emotions circulate through images, texts, and institutions to generate collective attachments. Within this visual economy of disaster, grief and gratitude adhere to both the bereaved woman and to İnönü as a paternal figure, transforming personal loss into a shared narrative of unity, a central motif in early Republican nation-building. Through visual and archival analysis, we examine how this emblematic photograph contributed to the construction of political imaginaries in the context of disaster. We argue that the image functions as a visual artefact through which national sentiment, state legitimacy, and emotional identification are mediated. With its evocative composition and emotional intensity, the photograph operates as a visual node in the affective economy of the Turkish Republic, condensing narratives of sacrifice, compassion, and paternal care. The findings advance the study of affect in visual culture by demonstrating how a single photograph can become a site of emotional investment and state legitimacy, offering a framework for scholars working at the intersection of architecture, media, and memory studies.

Photographs are a preferred site of focused remembrance activity as they both resemble, and feel connected to, the individuals shown. Efforts to sustain connection to the dearly departed are made visible through physically enacted, creative embellishment of the photographic portrait – manipulations, words, and performances. But what do these gestures suggest might be lacking in the photographic portrait as meaningful memory object? How do they intervene in this perceived lack? And finally, how might the bereaved most effectively enact these transformations? My doctoral thesis, “Developing Memory: Remembrance, Embellishment and Hauntography,” introduced the concept of ‘hauntography’ in order to address the phenomenon whereby certain photographs remain connected to remembrance of the dearly departed, even when the photograph itself is no longer viewable (2023). Detailed visual and textual analysis was applied towards a consideration of persistent engagement with cherished photographs to illuminate the persistent influence of photographs that are misplaced or intentionally avoided. In this paper, the concept of hauntography is applied towards two distinct nineteenth to early twentieth century photographic collections, with particular attention to the transformative effect of interventions, enacted by women, upon these photographic portraits in a North American context: The vast portraiture, and innovative composite/multiple exposure photography of Hannah Maynard of Victoria, BC (1834 1918); the portrait photography of Ts'msyen photographer Benjamin Alfred Haldane’s (1874 1941); and Ts’msyen scholar Mique’l Dangeli’s (1980) archival research and resurrective choreography of Haldane’s images of her ancestors. Produced in geographic and temporal proximity, these collections offer intimate views of both first wave settler colonial and Ts’msyen communities. Considering these oeuvres alongside each other – with attention to their respective contexts of production/reception, and each community’s specific remembrance concerns – this paper addresses our inadequate knowledge of remembrance through photography as well as responding to questions of representation. Who is remembered and how?

In his breakout artwork _Hitler Moves East_ (1972-75), Jewish American artist David Levinthal (born 1949) features photographs that recreate the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union using toy soldiers. Scholars such as James E. Young have long positioned _Hitler Moves East_ and a later, Holocaust related series, _Mein Kampf_, 1993-94, as postmodern representations of history that copy and comment on a range of mediated depictions of war and genocide, from battlefield documentary photography to Hollywood features. But I believe that Levinthal’s work also warrants examination from a psychoanalytic perspective. Levinthal’s passion for toys, together with his manipulations of them, suggest a childlike desire for mastery over imagined worlds. I argue that, like Freud’s grandson’s fort/da game, Levinthal’s creation of his photographs, in which he sometimes even subjected his toys to the punishing effects of fire, suggests a controlled form of acting out which, at the same time, presents the possibility of working through to break free from his inherited trauma of World War II and the Holocaust. But the trauma of Holocaust history imposes limits on the possibility of working through, and these appear in Levinthal’s _Mein Kampf_, for example in his re-enactments of Einsatzkommando killings of naked women. Notwithstanding that Levinthal intended these images to direct attention to eroticized popular postwar representations such as Liliana Cavani’s film _Night Porter_ (1974), Marianne Hirsch has criticized them because they “serve as a means of forgetting…. In subjecting the scene of execution to a pornographic gaze, he … circumvent[s] the murderousness of the Nazi gaze.” I argue that Levinthal’s “forgetting” may be discussed in terms of Freudian dissociation. I conclude that the artist’s toy re-creations express a postwar generational desire to overcome an inherited trauma and master an unmasterable past. Fashion Institute Technology - SUNY, Professor, History of Art