Photo-documentation and political participation: The role of photographic self-representation in Brazil and Bangladesh

This communication aims to analyse the work of two groups of photographers that build their discourses (words and images) to change the negative image people have of them. The first one, a Brazilian group of photographers from Rio’s favelas, try to deal with a process of criminalization of poverty that exists in the Brazilian society, and that causes a series of interventions of the State, through the police, in their neighbourhood. These conflicts generate various types of violence: symbolic, physical and lethal. The second one, a Bangladeshi group based in a middle class neighbourhood in Dhaka, is concerned about the image the “Western World” has about them. The image of poor and hungry victims of the natural tragedies got even worst after the 9/11, when they also came to be seen also as potential Muslim terrorists. How these photographers react through photos to these troublesome representations (whether an ethnicity, a religion or a social class) is the subject of this discussion. Through a cross-cultural comparison, I will analyse some of their photographs combined with other types of data collected during different qualitative empirical studies undertaken with both groups. Therefore, I will reflect on how these photographers are using these subject feelings of deprivation, injustice and exclusion to build new forms of protests, contentions and organize themselves to change the perception ‘others’ have about them and their insertion in the world (in a local or a global perspective). Preserving their peculiarities, I will reflect on how negative (re) presentations one makes about ‘others’ can produce a single unit around questions, such as identities, representations, selfness and otherness. I will also analyse how this is been used as a tool of protest or even a movement to fight for justice and (social) inclusion.