Trans Memory Archive

Bibliographic Data

ID13087715
AuthorsMaría Belén Correa (0000-0002-2358-4032, corresponding author), Cecilia Estalles (0000-0003-3917-1205), Carla Pericles, Ivana Bordei, Magalí Muñíz, Carolina Figueredo
Year2019
Volume6
Issue2
Pages156-163
Publication date2019-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTSQ Transgender Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2328-9252 • E-ISSN: 2328-9260
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/23289252-7348440
OpenAlexW2943922206
LanguageEN
Citations received7

Together Argentine activists María Belén Correa and Claudia Pía Baudracco dreamed of creating El Archivo de la Memoria Trans or the Trans Memory Archive. After Claudia Pía's untimely death in 2012, María Belén moved forward with the project and began collecting photographs from other Argentine transwomen in digital space. Using a closed Facebook group, transwomen uploaded personal photographs and shared anecdotes that spanned decades, finding one another again. As the project swelled, a small team of transwomen and professional photographers formed to begin digitizing photographs, scanning them in high resolution to preserve trans memory.The Trans Memory Archive collective presently includes founder María Belén Correa, Cecilia Saurí, Cecilia Estalles, Ivana Bordei, Magalí Muñíz, Carolina Figueredo, Carlos Ibarra, Carla Pericles, and Florencia Aletta. Sharing mate and chisme, the team meets every Wednesday to exchange photographs and memories, passing prints from hand to hand. They remember their loved ones and nemeses alike, and they record oral histories each time another transwoman arrives with new photographs to scan. Most recently, the archive was awarded first place out of all competing archives in Latin America for the Preservación y Acceso Documental Prize granted by major foundation Ibermemoria Sonora y Audiovisual in recognition of the collective's efforts around document access and preservation. The images that follow (figs. 1–6) were selected from the archive and are followed by excerpts from interviews sought for this special issue and conducted by archive member Cecilia Estalles with a number of transwomen who form part of the archive's team.We never could have imagined the shape that this project is taking. Something that started from nothing is becoming a true archive.As far as the photographs that make up the archive go, we have treasures, especially the black-and-white photos. I think of them as treasures because they contain our memory. They're the only thing that we have to reclaim our past, since so few of us survive.I see very few remaining emotional links. So many friends are missing—that died in accidents, that the military killed or disappeared during the dictatorship. And those of us that are still here carry memories with us of what we went through.When I see the photos, my entire life comes back to me, and I am moved at having survived all that. It moves me, but recounting what happened also makes me feel brave, since I am one of the few survivors of my generation.I love being part of the project and learning more each day because it excites me to learn to do new things. Now, I look at photos that come into the archive and I say, “This photo could enter an exhibition or a contest.” I can see the photo for the part that would interest everyone else, something that I didn't see before.I work on the research pieces: I have to go through old magazines, police reports. Sometimes I'll go through the newspaper archives at the national library, and I enjoy it. I was raised with these police reports in my head.It is worth so much for us to show society what we went through and how we lived back then. Lots of the photos are of trans people cooped up in hotel rooms. Very little social life could be lived outside, in plazas, in restaurants. It always strikes me. I was a teen in the 1980s and still a young person in the 1990s. And society found out about the things that we lived through back then only because we were constantly in police reports: “A dead travesti found murdered.” And it's still hard to believe that society has been indifferent to that slaughter. So, when we say that we're teaching something to society, it takes a bit for me to believe it because we're still sharing this society with the same people that reported me because they didn't like how I looked in restaurants or in a supermarket.I think that years ago we lived with more companionship because repression made us all equally vulnerable. Then, the word sisterhood truly existed. For us it may be a new word, but we've always lived with this camaraderie. There have always been people that have helped out the younger ones. I don't know if elder is the right word because I remember that when I was a young girl the oldest woman I met must have been only thirty. They didn't have a chance at a long life. Nowadays, we're learning to get really familiar with old age as well.The Trans Memory Archive is built from each of our experiences and with the life experience of the compañeras that donated and lent their photos for us to be able to have them and archive them. The photos are fantastic. Our very compañeras took them. Most of them are photos that we took at home because we didn't have the freedom to go out. And they're really valuable—they hold a lot of memories, a lot of feelings.For me, what we make is art; it is a memory archive, but it is also art through the photographs, through the exhibitions, through everything that we're building.I think photography has to speak for itself; the photos talk to you and tell you things. The difference between a photo taken by a photographer and one by us, I think, is the technique. We take casual photos. Technique is just as important as taking a photo with feeling, with care, with affection, with love for the person. Technique is important later so that the photo comes out well. The photos we've taken have more feeling. We take them in a nice, joyous moment, in a moment where we are happy, even if they're inside a house, but we were happy, celebrating a birthday, or having a drink, or smoking a joint, whatever. . . . For us, they were happy moments. They were photos taken with tenderness, with love.The photographs excite me. I experienced it in the exhibition. The exhibitions were a total honor for me. I never thought that our photos were going to be seen by so many people. Truthfully, I felt proud for myself and my collective, that so many people started to see us. I saw myself in those histories. I went back thirty years, remembering, reliving those moments in my mind, seeing my compañeras from so many years ago with whom we shared moments together, good moments and bad. In the photographs, generally you see the few moments when we had the opportunity to get together. The exhibition helped me to relive the past. I never began to imagine that I was going to feel that, but it really moved me to see the photos.Nowadays, the archive keeps us together. Now we meet up more. We chat more among ourselves. It's like we have a different space than what we had before.From the moment we entered the archive, it was a spectacular experience for me. It was such an amazing idea—something that never really crossed my mind. I never pictured myself learning to digitalize a photo, to scan, to find value in a photograph. Maybe before I didn't see as much value in a photo as I do now. I'm learning to value something that I didn't even think about before.Personally, it changed me so much, working in the archive, in my spirit; it raised my self-esteem because I began to get in touch with other people, to keep my mind busy, to clear up a lot of things that maybe I didn't even realize because I was coming out of a not-so-good time in my life, and this changed me a lot. For me it was an important step. If it hadn't been for the archive, our stories would never have been seen. Our photos never would have been exhibited. It's like the archive gave us the opportunity to scream out our pain at the top of our lungs, what we felt and what we lived.When I began to scan photos, when I attended the exhibitions, I realized the value that these photos have because each photo represents a story. I hadn't understood that value before, and being in the archive helped me to understand.I feel a little like a photographer because I enjoy it

Art · Art history · Collective memory · Humanities · Political science · Visual arts · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Memory, violence, and history

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