DUSTIN R. HILES is a professional photographer specializing in Documentary, Commemorative/Wedding, and Fine Art Photography, as well as Visual Ethnography. For over a decade, he has traveled both domestically and abroad in pursuit of the creative gestalt—that photographic moment of encounter with a subject that speaks beyond the sum of its visual parts, pushing the bounds of habituated expectations and conventional imagination.
Hiles’ creative research interests include: visual culture, representation, and cultural memory, as well as the roles of consciousness, creativity, and agency in society. He has held multiple exhibits of his photography, primarily within the Southwestern United States. His interdisciplinary “A Politics of Imagination in Argentina” (2008) explores the social relations necessary for minimizing inequalities and realizing social justice through the everyday practices of communities and societies—including how we imagine and interact with photographs, through creation as well as consumption. (See below for full abstract).
Hiles is a graduate of Northern Arizona University’s (NAU) interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Studies program, which explores the theory and practice of “Good and Sustainable Communities.” He also holds a Master of Education degree in Bilingual and Multicultural Education, with specialization in Teaching English as a Second Language, and has lived abroad in Sweden, France, and Argentina.
Hiles currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.
ABSTRACT
A POLITICS OF IMAGINATION IN ARGENTINA
DUSTIN R. HILES
(Northern Arizona University, 2008.)
This thesis, composed of both an original body of photography set in the city of Buenos Aires and writings on the social, cultural, and political repercussions of “imagination” within and beyond the context of Argentina, departs from the genocidal legacy of the Argentine Dirty War (1976-1983). The Dirty War, which functioned via the imposition of visual absence and public silence through a mixture of secret abductions, organized torture, and mass murder of 30,000-40,000 citizens (the “disappeared”), marks a tragic high water mark for the real-world consequences of a military State's regime of symbolic distortion.
Departing from this highly politicized perspective, I highlight photographically a series of subjects that reveal this tensioned and volatile relationship with the nation's genocidal past, as revealed in the present form(s) of Buenos Aires, while simultaneously exploring, in writing, ways of appreciating the critical challenges of such a legacy. Through the problematization of “gaze,” “light,” and other constitutive practices, which communities continually perform and undergo, I aim to promote a view of the multiform or mosaic-like nature of social imaginaries, approximating what Eviatar Zerubavel calls a cognitive disposition of “optical pluralism.” Finally, by means of both photography and writing, I attempt to call attention to a series of interpretive and perceptual openings that endure alongside, and despite, the conforming tendencies of conventional systems of representation.
Thus, I am able to argue for greater awareness of the limits and consequences of any monopolistic perspective while also urging further participation by an increasingly diverse array of agents and perspectives in the continual endeavor of cultures, societies, and communities everywhere actualizing their powers of imagination to cultivate a more encompassing and appropriate “imaginary.”
The six included photo-essays are entitled: 1) La Poesía Esta En La Calle (Poetry Is In The Streets) 2) Multiple Publics 3) Memory Work 4) Contested Urban Canvas 5) Texture B t The Lines 6) Sin Nombres (Without Names)
Online viewing at: http://s1223.photobucket.com/albums/dd505/dustinhiles/