Bodies that Do Not Matter: Marginality in Maya Goded's Photographs of Sex Workers in Mexico City

Abstract

Maya Goded is one of the most renowned contemporary Mexican photographers. This paper focuses on an analysis of a selection of photographs from her album entitled Plaza de la soledad (2006), which contains images of prostitutes working in the oldest red-light-district of Mexico City. After briefly situating Goded in the context of contemporary Mexican visual culture and its relationship with representing prostitution, the focus will shift to the ethical tensions involved in socially engaged visual production using Plaza de la soledad as an example. Drawing on Judith Butler's theories in Bodies That Matter (1993) Goded's photographs will be examined as cultural texts challenging gendered stereotypes in Mexico and visually resisting reductive binaries. They will also be studied as simultaneously forging a cultural space for otherwise unrepresented or underrepresented people and potentially fetishising and commercialising the suffering of others. To that end, recent theoretical debates about ethical ambiguities in documentary photography will be considered. Close analysis of a selection of photographs from the album will exemplify different representations of women within the frames of their internal and external displacements while examining the images' potential for empowerment as well the risks of exploitation.

Keywords:

• Mexican photography
• Maya Goded
• marginality
• prostitution
• sex workers
• representation
• Judith Butler
• documentary ethics

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Maya Goded for kindly agreeing to the reproduction of her photographs in this paper. I am also very grateful for the PhD grant awarded to me by the QMUL Westfield Trust Research Studentship and the support of my supervisors Professor Parvati Nair and Professor Elza Adamowicz at QMUL in writing this article.

Notes

¹Plaza de la soledad was republished by Umbrage Editions without consultation with Goded and re-named Good Girls for the English-speaking markets. Despite being fluent in English, the photographer was not consulted about this significant change of title and not informed about the editorial process, although both editions retain the same order of photographs and the same format. Goded is uncertain of her legal rights with regard to that body of work and she has not benefitted financially from the publication of the English edition, apart from having been sent a copy of her own album. For the purposes of this article, Plaza de la soledad remains its focus as the album over which Goded retained full editorial control (Goded 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dominika Gasiorowski

Dominika Gasiorowski successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled ‘Representing Mexican Otherness: Subalternity in Maya Goded's Socially Engaged Photodocumentary’, which she completed at Queen Mary University of London under the supervision of Professor Parvati Nair in November 2014. After obtaining a BA in Hispanic Studies from the Queen Mary University of London, she completed her MPhil degree in European Literature and Culture at King's College, University of Cambridge. Her research interests include Latin American cultural studies and visual culture, as well as critical theory, particularly in relation to concepts of gender, race, identity, violence and difference.