Mediterranean Seascapes: Migrations, Photography, and the Haunted Spectator

On October 3, 2013, over 300 migrants died as their boat sank off the coast of Lampedusa, an Italian island located in the Mediterranean Sea seventy miles from Tunisia. This was probably the most dramatic shipwreck that ever occurred in the Mediterranean, and certainly that which attracted the most media attention in Italy and elsewhere. Since at least 1992, the European Union migration policies have transformed the Mediterranean Sea in a liquid space of deadly journeys and vulnerable bodies, where geopolitics combines with neo-colonial forms of violence and racism (Mountz, Lloyd, 2014). The aim of this contribution is to address the visual economies of contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean, with a focus on shipwreck images and the (im)possibility for an ethical relationship with them. In particular, I will explore the unstable relationship between those images and their viewers, whether the photographer, the spectator, or the researcher. This space of encounter enacted by photographs is filled with affective ties, raising questions such as the following: What happens when we look at the images of shipwrecks? How do we negotiate the affective and political distance between us and the events portrayed? How can we possibly resist emotional structures that turn us into passive and complicit spectators? By combining a critical discourse analysis methodology with a cultural geography approach, I will analyse a set of photographs of Mediterranean shipwrecks (2013-2022) and the emotional performances involved in their production and reception.