Women Made Visible by Aceves Sepúlveda Gabriela;

Author:Aceves Sepúlveda, Gabriela;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS025000 History / Latin America / Mexico, SOC028000 Social Science / Women's Studies, SOC052000 Social Science / Media Studies
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska

Women Wielding the Camera: Images and Genealogies of Photographic Practices

The emergence of new wave feminism and the hosting of the UN’s first International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City also coincided with a shift in the gendering of photographic practice—from one considered a dubious feminine practice to a full-fledged masculine revolutionary practice—thus renewing the war of images over the representation of Mexican femininity. In the context of the reconfigurations of gender and political subjectivities that took place in the 1970s, and following the dictates of state institutions, some women photographers sought a still more “authentic” feminine essence, traveling to rural communities in search of mythical examples of matriarchal indigenous organizations, while others pointed their viewfinders toward women on the street, and thus fought the war of images on another front. I would like to highlight two images that visually represent these distinct image-making traditions.

The first image, taken by Jiménez in 1982, depicts a group of women from the Coalición de Mujeres Feministas performing what looks like line-dance choreography celebrating the establishment of the first Red Nacional de Mujeres (RNM), a national network of women’s groups that fought for women’s rights from different ideological perspectives (fig. 33).

It belongs to a series of images that document a performance on the occasion of the celebration of the II Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres (II National Encounter of Women). In the foreground four women holding hands and dressed in jeans, shirts, sweaters, and tennis shoes appear to be singing (shouting or laughing in chorus) as they walk toward Jiménez’s camera. More women performing similar actions fill up the background of the image. In the left corner of the photograph a woman wearing a kind of huipil (an embroidered indigenous blouse) and jeans holds the hands of another woman in preparation for some movement. The woman wearing the embroidered blouse seems to have a darker skin tone than the women who occupy the foreground.

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