After Image

Imagining an image of the missing: zooming in on enforced disappearances in Mexico

cultures of information

challenge

How can we help grow engagement with the issue of enforced disappearances in Mexico?

designers

Jella Lena van Eck

partners

Justice & Peace

Lucia

designers

Jella Lena van Eck

Newspaper headlines, documentaries and the circulation of images online: enforced disappearances in Mexico have received a lot of media coverage, nationally and internationally. However, all this information fails to hit home. Jella Lena van Eck teamed up with Mexican Human Rights Defender Lucia to create the impact and engagement that is so urgently needed. They propose a new film format that shows the disappeared persons, their lives, their communities and loved ones.

partners

Justice & Peace

Lucia

Afterimage

With the Afterimage project, Jella aims to redefine the way this issue is communicated. The usual reporting is often not engaging, either because these stories feel too much like fiction, or because they seem too far removed. Many people find it hard to relate, because these formats fail to raise the question: what if it was me or my family members who disappeared suddenly and unexplainably?

Afterimage

With the Afterimage project, Jella aims to redefine the way this issue is communicated. The usual reporting is often not engaging, either because these stories feel too much like fiction, or because they seem too far removed. Many people find it hard to relate, because these formats fail to raise the question: what if it was me or my family members who disappeared suddenly and unexplainably?

Newspaper headlines, documentaries and the circulation of images online: enforced disappearances in Mexico have received a lot of media coverage, nationally and internationally. However, all this information fails to hit home. Jella Lena van Eck teamed up with Mexican Human Rights Defender Lucia to create the impact and engagement that is so urgently needed. They propose a new film format that shows the disappeared persons, their lives, their communities and loved ones.

Lucia’s work in Mexico

In Mexico, Lucia is shedding light on enforced disappearances by exposing the inaction of the authorities and supporting families of the victims. She has founded a non-profit organisation that contributes to bringing justice for the disappeared and their families. Their main effort is in actively seeking and uncovering clandestine graves, as a response to the lack of investigation by the authorities.

What remains

Afterimage is the result of the collaboration between Jella and Lucia. As a filmmaker, Jella shifts the focus away from the blurry passport aesthetic, which is typically associated with the media coverage of this problem. She intends to create a ‘negative’ portrait, which reconstructs the life before the person disappeared and to contrast that with the transformation and adaptation that follow their disappearance.