ALBERTO BARAYA’S DECOLONIAL AND POSTTRAUMATIC PHOTOGRAPHY: DISPLACED DIFFERENCE AND CULTURAL TRAUMA

Abstract

In dialogue with ongoing discussions about decolonization of trauma theory that account for cultural trauma and sustained and long trauma processes, this paper discusses Alberto Baraya’s series Service Included (1997) in order to identify decolonial challenges and possibilities for posttraumatic photography. It argues that this series is a performative work that proposes a critical and decolonial revision of trauma culture, by appropriating the symbolic dimensions of Spanish-Catholic motifs of sacred violence historically and currently employed as cultural mechanisms for representation of cultural trauma in Colombia. This paper recovers and discusses Baraya’s early, forgotten work and original appropriation of analogue photography operations with analogue photography, and proposes that the challenges Service Included offer for posttraumatic photography consist in both retracing symbolic active processes for dealing with trauma, and retracing photography’s history as a medium of expression of cultural trauma, in order to create spaces for “displaced difference” within cultural trauma and trauma culture.