Images from Exile

Abstract

This roundtable discussion brings together the teams of two online participatory photography projects with exiled victims of the Colombian conflict, Tejiendo Vidas [Weaving Lives] in Spain and Fotodiásporas [Diaspora Photos] in the USA. Both projects were linked, in distinct ways, to the Colombian state’s efforts to provide recognition and reparations to victims of the country’s armed conflict as part of wider transitional justice and peacebuilding processes underway since the signing of the historic Colombian peace accord in 2016. The participants in these projects were some of the estimated one million people who have left Colombia as a result of the armed conflict between 1982 and 2020. They used photography as a means to process and make sense of their experiences, to heal through building connection and dialogue and to be seen. Bringing together the multi-disciplinary teams made up of photographic facilitators, psychotherapists and transitional justice researchers who ran these two projects, this roundtable discusses the responsive methods, logistics and dynamics of virtual and hybrid projects that fused participatory and therapeutic photography approaches. Reflecting on the outcomes, similarities and differences between the two projects, the conversation explores, in a context where economic and material reparations are slow to emerge, the role that participatory photography projects have to play in enabling symbolic reparations for Colombians whose lives have been permanently changed by conflict.