Paper short abstract:

This paper has two aims: to discuss the value of photographic contests as a rich source to think about a place, and to relate this value with a non-representational ethnographic approach to photographs as living archives

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on a current ethnographic project in Footscray, a western suburb in Melbourne. The presentation has two aims: to discuss the value of photographic contests as a rich source to think about a place, relating this value with a non-representational ethnographic approach to photographs as living archives. We suggest that a collective group of photographs, framed within a specific emplacement, in this case Footscray, can be treated differently than "data" or "representations". We approach them as a collective imagined archive of a place in a moment of time. In this sense, the resulting images would not be the sum of a group of photographers documenting an "objective reality". Instead, we suggest approaching the contest as a whole, as the materialization of a multiple ways to "image-ning" the place by its inhabitants, comprising their lived experience of the place.

Traditionally there has been a clear distinction between personal and vernacular images —those produced in the family and the home—, and those produced professionally for mass and public circulation in media, advertising and art circuits. The digital problematized this distinction by turning the photographic practice and the resulting images into a more porous activity, blurring the line between professional and amateur, between personal and public (Lasen & Gómez Cruz, 2012) and between private exhibition and mass distribution. The potential methodological implications of this shift are still under-theorized. This presentation contributes to this discussion by offering a theoretical description of photo-contests as living archives of non-representational place-making accounts.