Paper short abstract:

This study investigates the role of mourning through published personal photos that took place in the occupied Tahrir Square in 2011. The various modalities, with which mourning had been performed, had targeted the socio-spatial production of memory, and the creation of new social bonds of care.

Paper long abstract:

This study aims to investigate the role of mourning through published personal photos that took place in the occupied Tahrir Square in 2011.

The massive use of photography at this period of revolutionary actions seemed to have the creation of international public awareness of the local struggles as its goal. At the same time, as Lara Baladi (2017) stated about Tahrir's photography of 2011, photographing meant belonging, as personal photography took a social aspect, it had a kind of sense of social responsibility.

Based on the perspective of Ariella Azoulay (2012), who introduces the event of photography, describing the interrelated connections of actors and environment at the time of the shooting, I started exploring the published amateur photos. I focused on those depicting mourning practices that seem to have reproduced at a very fast pace in various ways and contexts. The portraits of the Martyrs of Tahrir were used simultaneously as signs of bravery and vulnerability, and also as strong traces of presence.

The various modalities, with which mourning had been performed, had targeted the socio-spatial production of memory, and the creation of new and strong social bonds of solidarity and care. As Stavrides (2019) claims, the spatial qualities of the commoning practices contain the elements of a potential emancipative future. The collective experience of mourning seemed to have a transformative role in the transient habitation of the city, which explores new formations of the public in public space.