Federica Iozzo
How can and how does care, through photographic practice, produce subject position and social relations? I am interested in photographs and social constructs in which, rather than being just the subject, care is the very premise of the act of photographing. I make photographs that are part of a care album which I edit in a shared process with family, friends and strangers. The care album is an instrument for sharing and activating my photographs. The album is never complete or finished, just as care is continuously in motion, changing and developing. Because of its relational qualities it can never reach a final form. The care album with the editing act and process mediates care, is the vehicle used to express care and at the same time conveys form of care as its message.
CARE IN PHOTOGRAPHS AND THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY. A PRACTICE.
Thesis
How does care through photographic practice produce subject position and social relations? In this work care is understood as an action which implies some kind of engagement. Care is not a complete action, but is ongoing. It can characterise a single activity or it can describe a process. When applied to my work, this implies that care is at the base of the encounters I experience and of the relational aspects of my photography, and is also fundamental in my photographic practice as a whole. I am interested in photographs and social constructs in which, rather than being just the subject, care is the very premise of the act of photographing. Care is expressed through the process and in many ways it forms the process itself. In this thesis this premise will be explored through a series of contextualised conversations and descriptions of experiences, each addressing a different manifestation of care in relation to photographs and the gesture of photographing, and bringing together discursive reflections around the notion of care. The writing presents situations of care in which photographs have a central role. These conversations and my own experiences represent snapshots of some of the multiple aspects of care. By centralising care in photography, the photograph moves beyond the moment of the clicked shutter and addresses the relationships which the photographic encounter establishes or strengthens. Care as a process also serves to reduce the objectification which photography often produces. It emphasises the relationships that photographs and the photographic encounter can produce and aims to remove the hierarchy between the photographer and the photographed.