Summary

The session examines how photography intersects with the histories of labour, architecture, and gender in Asian (post-)colonial contexts, particularly in Macau. It brings together researchers and consultants from the LabourMap-Macao project and has Professor Kathleen James-Chakraborty as respondent. The project explores how photography has documented and, at times, obscured the presence and roles of workers in construction processes. Despite its inherent subjectivities and limitations, photography captures both the built environment and the point of view of those behind the lens, revealing dynamics of power, visibility and authorship.

Click here for the conference program.

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Presentations

– Beatriz Serrazina and Leonor Matos Silva (Chairs, Dinâmia’CET-Iscte)

– Ana Vaz Milheiro (Dinâmia’CET-Iscte), “Getting to know the workers and the construction processes through photographic records of building sites in Macau (1938-197-)”

– Cecilia Chu (University of Hong Kong), “Engineering the Modernist Landscapes: Chinese Architecture and the “Ethnic Supplement”.

– Inês Leonor Nunes (University of Coimbra), “Photographing Chandigarh: Modern India Through Pierre Jeanneret and Jeet Malhotra’s Rolleiflex”.

– Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET-Iscte), “Captured in Transit: Two Women Architects and the Story of Labour Mobility from Portugal to Macau (1960s–1985)”.

– Inês Lima Rodrigues (Dinâmia’CET-Iscte), “Framing labour through the colonial lens: Photography and the (in)visibility of work on the construction of the Macau-Taipa Bridge (1969–1974)”.

– Kathleen James-Chakraborty (Respondent, University College Dublin).