Those Who are no Longer: Photographic image and representation of women’s absence(s) in Mayra Martell’s Ensayo de la Identidad at Ciudad Juarez

TRIQUELL, AGUSTINA

photographies

Taylor and Francis

Año: 2018 vol. 11 p. 57 - 72

1754-0763

The article analyses the work of Mexican photographer Mayra Martell ? particularly her series Ensayo de la identidad. Desaparición de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, México 2005?2010 (Identity Essay. Disappearance of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico 2005?2010) ? focusing on the visual strategies chosen to represent the absence ofthose women. this work is particularly interesting, considering both its points of contact and its distance from the strategies used for the representation of desaparecidos (victims of forced disappearance) in contemporary Argentine photography. Special attention is paid to the visual device proposed by Martell to represent these absent bodies and the strategies chosen to denounce these increasingly occurring individual stories with two biographicalelements in common: being female and being young. Further, the relationships with previous productions from the Argentine photographic context are discussed in order to reflect on the specific procedures that can induce a tension on the naturalized link between photography and memory, between absence and representation, and between image and denunciation.