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Photographing Humanity in the Posthumanist Void: The US-Mexico Borderlands in the Work of Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964) and Krista Schlyer (b. 1971)

Dawtry, Sarah-Louise J

Abstract Details

2016, MA, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History.
The Mexican-American borderlands have long been a site of cultural conflict and intermingling. After the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War, Mexico lost over half of its territory, leaving thousands of Mexicans in what became almost overnight US territory. Since that time, Hispanics have often been portrayed as sources of infection, blight, and corruption, discourses which have remained common with the 21st-century increase in immigration, both legal and illegal, from Latin American nations. In response to these dehumanizing, negative portrayals, numerous Hispanic artists such as ASCO, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Ricardo Valverde have taken it upon themselves to try and represent an independent Hispanic-American identity reflective of the Hispanic experience, usually focusing on images of people or shared cultural systems, with some turning to photography as a means by which to effectively capture this experience. Many American photographers have also sought to challenge stereotypes by portraying the challenges of border life and illegal migration, often creating images reminiscent of social documentary photography of the early 20th century. With a few shining examples, such as James Oles’ South of the Border, few scholars of borderlands art have comparatively analyzed the works of Hispanic and American artists, or explored alternate meanings of their artworks outside the categories of identity affirmation and social documentary. Two photographers who exemplify the possibilities created by bridging these divisions are the Hispanic-American photographer Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964) and the American documentary wildlife photographer Krista Schlyer (b. 1971). Both have deployed strategies to engage viewers by obliging them to reconstruct the concealed human activity in the image and thereby more deeply analyze the consequences of these actions, the former by symbolically erasing the bodies of lynched Hispanic Americans from souvenir images, the latter by focusing on the physical environment and wildlife of the borderlands rather than on the migrants. They also allow for the landscape to become not just a background but a powerful symbol of environmental justice, with humans and nature mutually shaping each other rather than being distinct, reified categories. This in turn opens a window onto a critique of the effort to preserve the integrity of the “American” body politic through biological control, a phenomenon also known as “biopolitics.” The works of Gonzales-Day and Schlyer create a space for an activist analysis which allows for an effective resistance to reductivist biopolitical discourses, part of a wider biopolitical apparatus which serves to oppress not only Hispanics but other racial and ethnic minorities. This study offers an analysis of the scholarly literature on borderlands art and recent debates in documentary photography. After setting a historical and theoretical foundation, the work of Gonzales-Day and the implications of his approach to lynching will be examined, with particular regard to his use of landscape. This will be followed by an exploration of the posthumanist implications of the work of Schlyer, with particular attention paid to her emphasis on a unified landscape and on human trace.
Tracy Teslow, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Kimberly Paice, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Morgan Thomas, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
80 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Dawtry, S.-L. J. (2016). Photographing Humanity in the Posthumanist Void: The US-Mexico Borderlands in the Work of Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964) and Krista Schlyer (b. 1971) [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459439987

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Dawtry, Sarah-Louise. Photographing Humanity in the Posthumanist Void: The US-Mexico Borderlands in the Work of Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964) and Krista Schlyer (b. 1971). 2016. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459439987.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Dawtry, Sarah-Louise. "Photographing Humanity in the Posthumanist Void: The US-Mexico Borderlands in the Work of Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964) and Krista Schlyer (b. 1971)." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459439987

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)