Photographs of the pandemic, invisibility and apparitions: Florence Goupil and Claudio Santana

Abstract

This article discusses the role of photography in building the collective imagination during the Covid-19 pandemic. We intend to trace the existing relationships and in turn highlight the discrepancies between the photographic practices of the media with those of the photographers Florence Goupil and Claudio Santana. Through this analytical reading we seek to show how these
artists participate in the construction of a counterimaginal of the pandemic that differs from the global homogeneous discourse by integrating the territories outside the urban centers, politics, public interest and media. It also seeks to show how they manage to rethink the pandemic from a war crisis to a social crisis, with the focus on the body and care, inviting both an ethical and aesthetic
reading through their photographs. These proposals manage to transcend the communication frameworks and stigmatizing stereotypes of the disease in the construction of a discourse that recognizes and welcomes different communities and the consequences that the outbreak of the pandemic has brought, thus destabilizing the dominant images offered by the media.