Poses, Possessions and Scenarios: The Photographs as Narratives of the Conquest of Europe

Abstract

The ethnographic narrative experiences articulating images and texts may trigger thesensitivities, knowledge and esthetical and cultural senses existing in the see-what-is-said/saywhat-is-seen relation. The photographs are among the possibilities of exploration of the universeof images. From the images taken from the daily lives of the transvestites, I argue that the posingis a signifying component capable of offering hints for the comprehension/ interpretation of someparticular aspects of that universe, not based only on the usual interpretations of the writtenwords. For this article, I gathered fragments of the transvestites’ migration to Italy, a projectsignificantly marked by the expectation of working and making a living, but which is also immersein glamour in a scenario where the images – photographs sent to the families and also madeavailable in the virtual platform – compose narratives of a success inscribed on the body, throughjewelry, cars, but also anchored in differentiated geographical spaces, capable of informingabout the “conquest of Europe”.