Against Precarious Abstraction Bearing Witness to Migration through Moysés Zúñiga Santiago’s La Bestia Photographs

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1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Through analysis of Mexican photojournalist Moysés Zúñiga Santiago’s (b. 1979) series La Bestia (The Beast, ca. 2011–16), this article examines the potential for photographs to challenge how certain bodies enter into visual circulation—the moment at which, and how, they are “allowed” to become seen. Zúñiga’s photographs challenge visual economies that depict migrants as faceless laborers or criminals, and reframe contemporary immigration as a labor of everyday survival. The author reads the photographs alongside other contemporaneous visual culture texts about immigration and the US-Mexico border, and in the context of a dearth of images that document the actual process of Latinx migration toward the United States. Grounded in this analysis, the article argues that the work of the photojournalist is to document and transmit the magnitude of the atrocity in a manner that foments new ways of witnessing contemporary migration.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)7-22
Number of pages16
JournalLatin American and Latinx Visual Culture
Volume1
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2019

Keywords

  • Borders
  • Human Rights
  • Immigration
  • Photography
  • Witnessing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cultural Studies
  • Visual Arts and Performing Arts
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

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