Photographic creation: space to make visible the appreciation for whiteness

Abstract

This article describes how the process of photographic creation can operate as a space and method for the construction of knowledge about how, “appreciation for whiteness” and the privilege of “being white”, are reproduced in Mexico. From a decolonial position, it analyzes the way in which eugenic ideology has detonated impulses to “purify” the national population and its symbolic representation throughout history. It makes proposals about how a process of photographic creation can generate reflections, criticisms and political actions aimed at the social transformation of reality: visualizing and eroding the domain of the coloniality of seeing; and questioning the reproduction of advantages and disadvantages in diversity.