2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageOn Displacement, Histories and Possibilities, Using Photography as a Decolonial Tool
William Camargo
Saturday, November 08 - 3:30PM to 4:00PM
In Alkaid's most recent book Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb, examines the gentrification of Orange County, California's Anaheim and the erasure of Latinx/e communities within. Narrated as oral history by Alkaid Ramirez, the book is structured as a photographic timeline of the artist's neighborhood, outlining the displacement of family businesses and homes—a devastating effect of the rampant real-estate developments in the area uprooting working-class communities. Ramirez writes about Anaheim Blvd, recollecting childhood memories and local establishments to document the importance of Chicanx history: An old veterano, a doughnut shop on the corner, hard-working parents who built his community. Both a counter-archive and a call to action, Ramirez refuses to accept the loss of his neighborhood. Instead, he speaks back, coopting developers' language, signage, and "we buy homes" postcards, remaining hopeful that local organizing and resistance movements will preserve the presence of those who made Anaheim. Opposite of this book also comes William Camargo's most recent monograph Origins & Displacement traces the 7-year photographic practice of Anaheim-based William Camargo, unearthing its roots in Brown histories and lived experiences. Camargo's photographs, interspersed with institutional records and archives of city-sanctioned segregation and exploitation, reveal the mundane and, in turn, invisible nature of embedded colonization in the streets of Southern California. Through his abject confrontation of this subject matter, Camargo's voice does not falter – whether it be through his photographic work, their quippy titles, such as "We Gunna Have to Move Out Soon Fam!" countering displacement and gentrification.
This will be a conversation between two artist/friends and collaborators on the different approach of tackling and issue like gentrification through photography, touching on issues of photographic history, performance and happenings that leave to question the use of the camera as a decolonial tool instead of a imperialist tool.
speaker
William Camargo
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