Reckoning and Reimagining: Deborah Barndt’s Engaged Use of Photography - Day 2
Photographs have always been central to Professor Emerita Deborah Barndt’s research, education, and community engagement.
Over the past year, Barndt engaged a team of five graduate students in a process of “participatory archiving,” critically revisiting the places, people, and processes represented in her photographs captured over five decades of transnational research and activism.
A 2008 exhibit, “Cross-Pollinations: Photography for Social Change in the Americas” reflected on Barndt’s ongoing movement back and forth between Toronto and Latin America: Peru in the 70s, Nicaragua in the 80s, Mexico in the 90s, always with a camera in her hand to document social movements and to teach others to photograph their own lives. The exhibit features foto-novelas for migrants to Lima, Peru (1976), photo posters for ESL classes in Toronto (1977-84), training literacy teachers as photojournalists in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution (1981-84) and photostories co-produced with Toronto communities around burning social issues (1986-93).
This exhibit is remounted for Congress with a more contemporary lens: a critical reflection by Barndt on the shifting contexts in the photos and on her role as a white outsider researcher, documenter and facilitator in communities marginalized by class, race, gender, and Indigeneity. In revisiting the work through the archival photos from 14 to 50 years ago in the present context, Barndt will embody the Congress theme of “Reckoning and Re-Imagining.” The exhibit will invite others to engage with the photos to generate conversations about the contexts, content, processes, and meanings of the images, thus activating the archive.
Please note this event will be presented in English. Bilingual titles and descriptions are for reference purposes only.
