IV Encartes Photo Contest: Uses and Contradictions of the Urban Infrastructure

Image: Miguel Ángel Aguilar

Lrban infrastructure specializes the uses of spaces and, in turn, hierarchizes them, determining who should use them and how they should use them. In some cases people employ various tactics and strategies to subvert the imposed and sometimes contradictory uses of urban interventions. These kinds of tensions between the material forms of the city and the living, acculturated bodies that experience them constitute a privileged access to the analysis of urban practices and their political value.

This contest aims to recover photographic testimonies about the ways in which transit and urban mobility are experienced in relation to the infrastructure of cities. We invite academics, students, activists and passers-by to share images that highlight contradictions of interventions on urban infrastructure and the common and everyday uses of the streets, with the aim of generating collective reflection from exemplary situations that make such experiences explicit.

Photographic proposals will be received in the following categories:

• Inaccessibilities: photographs that describe the way in which the infrastructure excludes certain bodies and urban practices in everyday uses.
• Road vulnerabilities: images that highlight forms of vulnerability associated with daily traffic, understanding the relationship between bodies, vehicles and roads.
• AdequaciesPhotographs showing interventions by people on the infrastructure, either to make it more suitable for the practices and services they perform or to meet other needs. Such interventions may be on vehicles or on public infrastructure.
• Sneaky reviews: images that present the critical view of passers-by on the public space, from graffiti, stencils, stickersThe message should always be directed to the practice of transit.

The best photographs will be selected by the Editorial Coordination Team considering their suitability to the proposed thematic categories, the significance of what was captured and elementary aspects of technical quality. The final selection will be included in the gallery that will accompany the virtual version of issue 10, volume 5 of the Encartes magazine to be published in September 2022.

Characteristics for shipments:

• Photographs must be self-taken.
• Have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.
• Include a title and a maximum of two lines of context.
• Place and date where the photograph was taken.
• Author's full name.
• Contact information.

Photos and additional data will be sent to the mail: encartesantropologicos@ciesas.edu.mx. The deadline for submissions is August 5, 2022 and entries selected for publication in issue 10 of the journal will be announced on August 26, 2022.

We look forward to your participation!