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Toumayacha Alakana: this expression is the inspiration behind Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo’s work, which led to the completion of a thesis in photography. It means “to look at a head covered with a veil.”
This is how the Fuegians named the act of taking photographs in the 19th century, when they saw the first cameras and the photographers who arrived in South America as early as 1840.
What names did local peoples give to these new image-objects? How was this unfamiliar tool perceived? What does it mean to be looked at with one’s head covered by a veil?
European photographic collections depicting these ancestral Americas bear witness to colonialism and the sociopolitical context of the countries in question with regard to “indigenous” communities. These communities have, in part, lost their culture, as well as their economic and territorial autonomy.
But they also bear witness to a unique history concerning not only the use of technology, but also the relationship to knowledge and beliefs that characterize the culture of these peoples from “the ends of the earth,” as well as the conditioning of our perspective and our understanding of these same peoples. To claim that Native Americans do not want to be photographed, particularly because “their souls will be stolen,” is a colonial myth; this Western belief has lent value to the images that explorers brought back. The issue of camera refusal is far more complex and varied: resistance may concern the act of taking the photograph, the circulation of one’s own image, the one-sided nature of the transaction, a lack of understanding of the camera, or political and spiritual consequences.
Mänk’áčen (“the shadow hunter” in the Yahgan language) presents the work of artist, researcher, and curator Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo, and draws on an ethnographic archive to support the thesis of the existence of a “mystical mechanism”; text by Justo Pastor Mellado.
Published by Palais Books, 2022
24 cm 34 cm, 40 pages, like new
ISBN
Toumayacha Alakana: this expression is the inspiration behind Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo’s work, which led to the completion of a thesis in photography. It means “to look at a head covered with a veil.”
This is how the Fuegians named the act of taking photographs in the 19th century, when they saw the first cameras and the photographers who arrived in South America as early as 1840.
What names did local peoples give to these new image-objects? How was this unfamiliar tool perceived? What does it mean to be looked at with one’s head covered by a veil?
European photographic collections depicting these ancestral Americas bear witness to colonialism and the sociopolitical context of the countries in question with regard to “indigenous” communities. These communities have, in part, lost their culture, as well as their economic and territorial autonomy.
But they also bear witness to a unique history concerning not only the use of technology, but also the relationship to knowledge and beliefs that characterize the culture of these peoples from “the ends of the earth,” as well as the conditioning of our perspective and our understanding of these same peoples. To claim that Native Americans do not want to be photographed, particularly because “their souls will be stolen,” is a colonial myth; this Western belief has lent value to the images that explorers brought back. The issue of camera refusal is far more complex and varied: resistance may concern the act of taking the photograph, the circulation of one’s own image, the one-sided nature of the transaction, a lack of understanding of the camera, or political and spiritual consequences.
Mänk’áčen (“the shadow hunter” in the Yahgan language) presents the work of artist, researcher, and curator Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo, and draws on an ethnographic archive to support the thesis of the existence of a “mystical mechanism”; text by Justo Pastor Mellado.
Published by Palais Books, 2022
24 cm 34 cm, 40 pages, like new
ISBN
