Visibility, violence and queerness: Examining the potentiality of photographs

Abstract

Salvadoran photographer Elvis Guzmán’s photo exhibit ‘El Autobautismo: De la “I” a la “S”’ (‘Self-baptism: From “I” to “S”’) portrays the quotidian balance between queer survival and celebration by telling the story of three individuals: Isaac, a drag queen; Alex, a trans man; and Stacy, a trans woman. Guzmán’s photos reveal the ephemeral nature of queer identity and the rawness of becoming self in El Salvador as the individuals’ lived realities show a layered experience of trauma and reclaimed identity. In this article, I assert that while photographs and video media are impactful tools in normalizing and educating about situations of violence, their images simultaneously have the potential to reify and retraumatize through the visualization of experienced violence. This analysis of Guzmán’s photo composition contextualizes the embodied experiences of violence within the frame of queer identity and self-baptism in El Salvador in order to illuminate the contradictory and invaluable relationship between violence and visibility.