Introducing rephotography as a participatory tool to involve communities and to analyze the changing dynamics of industrial landscapes

This seminar will highlight the results of research focusing on industrial activity in the Biobío Region of Chile. In this project, I served as the principal researcher. The research explores how industrial coal mining in Lota shaped both urban landscapes and community identities. 

The specific topics is the use of rephotography as a methodological tool for analyzing the significance of nineteenth century and early twentieth-century coal mining in shaping the landscape and its processes of transformation. The research draws on the notion of “landscape biographies”, which bring together stories from the past that remain visible in the present landscape and continue to resonate within contemporary communities.

The findings highlight the aesthetic and formal qualities of mining settlements in southern Chile, as well as the persistence, loss, or alteration of these characteristics in the contemporary landscape.

About the Speaker
M. Isabel López Mezais one of the principal researchers of the Millennium Nucleus NupatS Project at the Universidad de Biobio, Chile.