Those Who are no Longer: Photographic image and representation of women’s absence(s) in Mayra Martell’s Ensayo de la Identidad at Ciudad Juarez

Abstract

The article analyses the work of Mexican photographer Mayra Martell — particularly her series Ensayo de la identidad. Desaparición de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, México 2005–2010 (Identity Essay. Disappearance of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico 2005–2010) — focusing on the visual strategies chosen to represent the absence of those women. this work is particularly interesting, considering both its points of contact and its distance from the strategies used for the representation of desaparecidos (victims of forced disappearance) in contemporary Argentine photography. Special attention is paid to the visual device proposed by Martell to represent these absent bodies and the strategies chosen to denounce these increasingly occurring individual stories with two biographical elements in common: being female and being young. Further, the relationships with previous productions from the Argentine photographic context are discussed in order to reflect on the specific procedures that can induce a tension on the naturalized link between photography and memory, between absence and representation, and between image and denunciation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mayra Martell for so generously sharing her images and answering my questions, and to Lucila Quieto, Inés Ulanovsky and Gustavo Germano for kindly allowing the reproduction of their photographs; and also to the members of the Citizenship and Human Rights Program for their contribution to the discussion of the draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Interview published in the digital journal Vice, available at https://www.vice.com/es_mx/article/dpb7mw/habitaciones-de-las-mujeres-de-juarez-0000581-v8n4.

2. To see other works of the photographer, visit her personal website: http://www.mayramartell.com/#.

3. The notion of state of exception developed by Giorgio Agamben problematizes life outside the state, the null life, as that space outside public law and political fact, between legal order and real life. Although it is considered that this would be an exceptional process resulting from political crises, and that it must be understood not within the juridical frame but within the constitutional political order, paradoxically it represents a legal form of what does not possess legal form. It is the way of recognizing the need to create “an own law” (Agamben).

4. We considered referring to a corpus of 16 works, defined not only by their thematic content but also by the more or less active participation in the local photographic field. The works are listed chronologically as follows: “Where Are They?” [¿Dónde están?] (Res, 1984‒1989); “Thirty Thousand” [Treintamil] (Gutiérrez, 1996), “The Class” [La clase] (Brodsky, 1996), “The Sons, Tucumán, 20 Years Later” [Los hijos. Tucumán, 20 años después] (Pantoja, 1996‒2001), “Archaeology of Absence” [Arqueología de la ausencia] (Quieto, 1999), “Disappearings” [Desapariciones] (Zout, 2000‒2006), “Daddy’s Trip” [El viaje de Papá] (Camilo Pérez del Cerro, 2006), “The Wall’s Weeping” [El lamento de los muros] (Luttringer, 2000‒2010), “Family Album” [Álbum de familia] (Cabot, 2010), “Santa Lucía, Archaeology of Violence” [Santa Lucía. Arqueología de la violencia] (Aráoz, 2001‒2008), “Your Pictures” [Fotos tuyas] (Ulanovsky, 2006), “Images of Memory” [Imágenes de la memoria] (Dell’Oro, 2007), “The Rescue” [El rescate] (Maggi, 2007), “Absences” [Ausencias] (Germano, 2008), “DNA” [ADN] (Acosta, 2010), and “Pozo de aire” (Gaona, 2008).

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Agustina Triquell

Agustina Triquell holds a PhD in Social Sciences from IDES–General Sarmiento National University and a BA in Social Communication from Córdoba’s National University. Her doctoral research focused on the way photographic images build up subjectivities in different social contexts. Since 2012 she has been a member of the Citizenship and Human Rights Program at IDES. She currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship, focusing her research on the relationships between visual culture and citizenship.