Paper short abstract:

Jalisco was a photographer who captured the everyday practices of the multi ethnical working class outskirts of Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Northern Africa. With the participation of neighbours and the support of social networks we are collecting his pictures for an exhibition

Paper long abstract:

Working with audiovisual archives on the story of the photographer Jalisco we discovered a few Facebook groups in which people shared old pictures of the city of Melilla: pictures of monuments or about everyday lives, mixing nostalgic feelings about the past and discourses about coexistence between the diverse communities. Observing these groups and searching resources about the photographer we decided to ask people to share with us their pictures with the aim to make an exhibition on Jalisco's work. The response pushed us to film the process and the interviews. The aim of the exhibition is to put together collective memories, putting order to the resources that, in some cases, already appear on the social network, asking for participation and establishing a collaboration with local people to analize the figure of Jalisco. The context of our work, Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Northern Africa, is a peculiar space due to the presence of diverse communities and the recent changes that characterized the outskirts of the city, once populated by a working class with diverse ethnics origins and now populated mostly by people from Amazigh (berber) origins. This empirical work wants to underline the importance of the participation in the creation of an archive of a local photographer who, with his pictures represented the everyday practices of a multiethnical working class neighborhood. The work wants to reflect on the actual isolation of the outskirts and the collective strength to create cultural heritage and recreate a forgotten past.