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Paper short abstract:

The photographs are a visual recount of my feelings of loss (grief) in a creative life narrative in which I have used photography as both a social science and an art practice in a combined research methodology. The photographs mediate my struggle to control memory in the small community of my family and were intended to control my power over negotiating self identity. The art project is about the feelings of devastation created by the loss of a family member and is used in an effort to overcome it. In doing so I explore photography as a tool mediating loss and how that is communicated and received in a culturally shared environment.

Paper long abstract:

'Dedicated to" is the resulting art piece of an auto ethnographic research project ,set in Perama the working class, sea industry suburb of Athens Greece from which I originate. I have used my photographic art practice to perform identities of loss attached to my family, while in bereavement. I was interested on how different people choose to remember or forget selectively through objects (photographs) in an effort to choose what and how to be. The evocative lens intention was to unearth gender politics practises in the family as well as an understanding of the dynamic of being both the researcher and the subject of the research. The photographs visualised the language that etches my memory and thus empowered me to articulate through the story telling the process of articulating, owning and thus redefining my history. Photography as an art practise and a research tool opened possibilities for new knowledge, and conversations to evolve and thus catered for the need for an unconventional self-directed way of redefining identity.