VISUAL SELVES, VIRTUAL REALITIES: DIALECTICS OF REPRESENTATION AND POWER IN PHOTOGRAPHY OF MIGRATION

The political and security-related tensions that have characterised life in the Middle East and other parts of the world during the first two decades of the 21st century have forced millions of people to leave their homes and look for new ones. Soon, this movement started to be articulated in a verbal discourse of crisis that advanced strategies of containment and modes of management and control. In the same vein, the visual discourse on migration, relying heavily on photographs of agony, highlighted its urgent and grave nature. Consequently, the visual field related to migration witnessed a remarkable eruption in the number of pictures depicting overcrowded boats, piled up lifejackets, distressed children, and dead bodies. This visual representation of migration insisted on constructing the migrant as a vulnerable and victimised person and, simultaneously, obscured features of autonomy and agency. In this context, and drawing mainly upon Visual Culture, this dissertation examines the articulations of European representation of migrants reaching the shores of the Old Continent. Additionally, and since this dissertation configures itself as a dialogue, it draws on Decolonial Theory to examine photographs produced by non-mainstream artists. This endeavour aims to not only discuss the limitations of the conventional European gaze but also to explore the possibility of other ways of seeing. Accordingly, this dissertation employs a multidisciplinary and a transdisciplinary approach to study the dynamics behind the representation of migrants that will shed light on the complexity of the phenomenon and open new doors to further discussions on the subject. Additionally, this dissertation proposes concrete examples of alternative methods and modes of reflections that can be undertaken for the establishment of more diversified and dialectic positions regarding the question of migration.