Images, glances and stories. A polyphony of life stories

Abstract

This paper has its origins in the life story of Electra and its context in the Spanish Civil War and post-war period, which is the central axis of a doctoral thesis story and converges in the autoethnography of one of the authors. In this article we focus on how our lives are marked by images that survive in our memory. Each accounted story takes shape in the frame of a mind and emerges as an image of what is told. And the connecting thread from the outer event with that inner, built-up image is the narrated word. We also find that there are other dialogues which are based on materialized images and tell us multiple stories in the context of an autoethnographic investigation. We show how the image conjures itself up in a dialogical form within an autoethnographic methodological reflection, which requires contemplative attention to listen to its discourse. It is not only about the visual and aesthetic pleasure, but also about the artistic, sociological and epistemological experience that shapes the development from one's own perception, critical and reflexive analysis, the discussion of observed points of view and dialogues (both our personal ones and those of others) as a source of knowledge. This is how the image gradually makes sense concerning the dialogue. By showing black and white photographs of the civil war and post-war period in the village of Alameda, a town in the province of Málaga, we engage in a dialogue which transcends the individual story of Electra and provides a space for reflection between the researcher, the villager who keeps the photos and other people outside the investigation itself. The image is seen as a meeting point between past and present, rebuilding a very particular and anonymous experience of the history of civil war that still holds its mark to this very day and emerges in the reflective process of autoethnographic research.

Keywords: Autoethnography. Historical memory. Life stories.