Photography Prize for Pictures Taken during ReGHID Fieldwork Activities
The Institute for Global Development at the University of Manchester launched in May 2021 a contest called Migration in Times of a Pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean calling for photographs that portrayed the lives of migrants and/or refugees in South America during the pandemic (February 2020 – May 2021). The selected images will be part of a virtual exhibition and will be published for educational purposes.
Bruna Curcio, a photographer based in Manaus and a collaborator of the ReGHID project, won the third place in the competition with photographs taken during ReGHID fieldwork activities in Boa Vista – RR in February 2020. Her photography series is entitled Varais, Portuguese for ‘clothes rack’.
About the experience, this is what Bruna Curcio has reflected:
Getting closer to the daily activities of migrants, whether inside or outside a shelter, is a valuable and uplifting experience. Knowledge about this reality often comes through numbers reported in the news and photographs of desaturated portraits that impress on the observer sensations such as lack and scarcity, limiting personal identification and distancing realities. The choice of photos that make up the “Varais” series is based on the search for similarities. What’s common in everyday life, in tasks, in care, in cleanliness, in the trivial. Identifying what connects us in essence brings awareness that we are all subject to situations of vulnerability, we are invited to see ourselves from a different perspective. Such invitation to “recognize yourself in the other” is explored in images that do not reveal faces and do not highlight eyes. This choice in composition seeks to avoid conditioning reactions in the observer when contemplating the photograph, and leaves the imagination free to serve its own narrative about those people at that moment. The vibrant colours rescue the memory of a striking revelation during contact with migrants: their abundance. There is a great and surprising dose of joy, hope, courage, and resilience in every gesture witnessed.
For the photographer, these records provide the opportunity to exercise a decolonial perspective, valuing plurality and offering alterity.
The winning photographs can be seen here.
IGDC Covid-19 Webinar Series
Migrants and Refugees Facing COVID-19: UK and Global Concerns
Join members of the team at the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre (IGDC) for the next instalment of their COVID-19 Webinar Series on Wednesday 11 November 2020 from 1600 to 1730 hrs (UK time).
The event will be chaired by Dr Sara de Jong of the Department of Politics at the University of York and will feature contributions from members of the ReGHID team Dr Pia Riggirozzi and Dr Adriana Velasquez. Joining them will be Emily Arnold-Fernandez, founder and Executive Director of Asylum Access, USA ; Niamh Ni Bhriain of the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands; and John Grayson of the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group
The webinar will be held via Zoom and if you would like to participate, please sign up via eventbrite here