The Camera & Violence Upon the 'Other' with Mysara Aljaru x Norah Lea
A Bras Basah Open event (2019)
From the camera obscura to camera orientalis (Behdad, 2016), the camera has been used for many reasons: as means of capturing and documenting, for purposes of history, truths, and memory; as representational, to encode and decode meaning through image; and as the symbolic, embodying structures and power relations between the photographer and their subjects. Photography and the act of photographing has contributed much to the visual depositories of how bodies have been mapped and narrated, and how in some cases, these reside within sites and narratives of violence, especially for those deemed to possess marginalized bodies, minority identities.
In this session, we hope to unpack these ways of seeing and contextualize these acts of violence borne from the image through the works of our two speakers:
Norah Lea will be sharing how as a self-portrait artist, she repositions the gaze of the camera, an artefact of colonial violence.
Mysara Aljaru will be discussing how mainstream media’s coverage of minorities continues to perpetuate violence towards already marginalised communities.
In this session, we hope to unpack these ways of seeing and contextualize these acts of violence borne from the image through the works of our two speakers:
Norah Lea will be sharing how as a self-portrait artist, she repositions the gaze of the camera, an artefact of colonial violence.
Mysara Aljaru will be discussing how mainstream media’s coverage of minorities continues to perpetuate violence towards already marginalised communities.
