El placer de la agencia

Nuevos motivos visuales de la protesta juvenil en Chile 2012-2015

Abstract

The visuality of the Chilean youth protest is analyzed from the winning photographs of the FOTOPRENSA contest that awards the best images of each year. From them we argue that we are witnessing the emergence of an emotional emphasis in the images of the protest that will involve different social actors: youth activists, image producers and socio-cultural analysts. This will result in a specific narrative emphasis and visual motif: the enjoyment and pleasure that constitutes protest and social struggles. This visual shift, from the epic-heroic canon to the pleasure of agency, is the result both of changes in the repertoires of youth protest and of the photojournalistic practices themselves: both agents, social movements and photojournalists, elaborate in interaction a narrative and cultural framework from which to think about contemporary social protests.