Photography, memories and landscapes: commensality and play in times of pandemic

Abstract

This article examines a series of images that encapsulate a moment in the social and material relations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. From a qualitative approach, the concept of landscape allowed us to develop a methodological articulation akin to collective memory. The corpus was formed, on one hand, through the selection of images from media galleries that consistently depicted the emptying and regulation of public space due to the actions of security forces. These forces ensured the confinement of recreational and food-related activities to domestic spaces. In this way, in this way, the narratives proposed by the media, aligned with the biomedical and punitive discourse, were analyzed, which tended to separate individual experience from collective experience. On the other hand, a selection of photographs from neighborhood photographic walks carried out by women leaders from socio-segregated neighborhoods is examined. This technique enables the recognition of alternative modes of visual organization and perspectives from the territories and practices within the local urban landscape. These daily practices offer another record of what is visible—of the everyday resistances and communal activities that never ceased; on the contrary, they intensified, particularly around the act of providing food. In Berger’s terms (2000), these images appeared as “alternative photographs” to the hegemonic scopic regime, shedding light on what was obstructed regarding the meanings of the pandemic: the power of collective strength.