Politics of (un)document: Immigrants and photographic devices in Seba Kurtis's postdocumentary photography

Abstract

The essay discusses the experimental forms of visual representation in the work of the Argentinean photographer Seba Kurtis. His work portrays several migrations from the southern to northern hemispheres using "flawed" devices and other heterodox resources that extend the limits of the concepts of record and representation, and their relation with technology. The technical device and security "device", seen from a biopolitical perspective intertwine in Kurtis´ photographic works, recording what we define as flawed experience and people without identity, which constitute the illegal immigrant condition. Photography becomes a form of resistance and necessarily veiled memory of a diaspora marked by its growing illegalization, in opposition to the record and control of the state devices.