Photographier les rapports de pouvoir, une mise au point depuis Conakry (Guinée)

Abstract

While photography is regularly used, for example, by social media and by the press to highlight forms of protest and struggle in space ; more ordinary relationships are less study. The photograph implemented in time and in precise places then becomes as much visible proof of the investigative process for the researcher as the “invisible” support of sociability, a key of the affective relation to the place. Based on a qualitative survey between 2014 and 2016 near road infrastructure in the Guinean capital, we are here to study the power relations that are deployed in ways, permanent or exceptional in these spaces crossed everyday. Associated with the inhabitant's speech, the photographic image reveals all the ambiguity of a planning thought conceived ex-nihilo (the infrastructure) as it highlights the complexity and the singularity of the ordinary fabric of the city in Conakry. It then makes it possible to restore the “bottom fabric” and the socio-spatial strategies of investment of space by and for the inhabitants while questioning the perceptions and representations of individuals, societies and their relationship to the lived territory.

Keywords

• photographic stories
• appropriation
• infrastructure
• ordinary fabric
• climate sensitive