Amanda Obando - A Conversation with IM-Prudencia Colectiva:The First Collective of Women Photographers in Central America

Amanda Obando

A Conversation withIM-Prudencia Colectiva: The First Collective of Women Photographers in Central America

Imprudencia Colectiva design inspired by Emory Douglas of the Black Panther Party. Authorized by Imprudencia Colectiva.

Sheets of A4 paper on 25 Avenida Norte on 35mm film, Fomapan (March 7th 2021, Amanda Obando) On the evening of March 7th 2021, at 9pm, three women and I pasted A4 pieces of paper in groups of 24 to create a single image. We glued four of them to walls along 25 Avenida Norte with a mix of water and glue. By the end, our hands were dirty with soot. The capital, San Salvador, had been claimed as a street gallery by Imprudencia Colectiva (Imprudent Collective) for the march of International Women's Day on March 8th 2021, a day appropriated by Latin American feminist groups to protest and fight for women's rights.

Two of El Salvador’s known photojournalists, Jessica Orellana and Menly Cortez, were part of my group. Also, Ana Guardado worked beside us who is another member of the Imprudencia Colectiva.

Along with most other women from El Salvador, deciding on the name of the first collective of women photographers in Central America, was obvious to me. The Imprudencia Colectiva takes its name from a famous women's rights activist, Prudencia Ayala, known as the first woman to ever run for president in El Salvador.

Jessica Orellana’s photograph on 25 Avenida Norte (Menly Cortez)

Ana Guardado mentioned that: “Ayala did not have citizenship. Women back in that day had private rights (like property ownership and inheritance) but not citizen rights, which are now known as civil rights. For example, voting and political participation... So less than 100 years ago, women were not considered citizens and could not aspire for elective positions.”

To put this into perspective, women's suffrage in the United States was granted in 1920.

Ayala herself was indigenous and dropped out of school in her elementary years. Yet the story goes that she had a vigorous spirit and wrote poems, books, and manifestos. Her images, the ones I grew up seeing, show a short, dark woman. She held a cane as a protest against the Salvadoran upper high class of the 20th century. The decision to run for president in 1930 shook Latin American women’s movements when her attempt to gain civil rights was denied by the Salvadoran Supreme Court. It is pretty safe to say that she is a popular icon in today’s feminist movement for a good reason.

On the eve of March 8th, I had discovered that the Colectiva had been inspired by Jessica Orellana. She has long curly hair and an infectious grin, both of which make her unmissable. I saw her first at a protest in November 2020, where she was on an assignment for Reuters Magazine.

I decided to talk to her over Zoom recently, to know more about the Colectiva’s origin story. It began when she travelled to Ecuador in 2019, on a scholarship for the Women Photograph Workshop. Baffled by the exposure to the larger world of images beyond her field of photojournalism, she quickly learned about the collectives that existed in all other countries but El Salvador. Photography collectives are not the only groups El Salvador lacks. El Salvador also lacks a photography school, the nearest being in Guatemala.

Yet, the motivations to create Imprudencia Colectiva varied, not only to bring Salvadoran women photographers together. One big catalyst was the continued involvement of outsiders creating visual narratives about our nation. Jessica Orellana recounted that in Ecuador, she was being mistaken for Jessica Avalas, a journalist who had worked on a piece with a Franco-Argentine writer and a Mexican photographer that appeared

Prudencia Ayala, Salvadoran writer and activist, posing with her cane. (Creative Commons)

in the New York Times about a town that relies on immigrant remittances called Intipuc City. In a world increasingly being influenced by images, our Jessica felt troubled by the idea that the photographs were not coming from a native perspective. Nothing against the photographer, in fact, Koral Carballo gave us a workshop during lockdown.

Things quickly started coming to fruition when Jessica Orellana expanded her network from photojournalism to other genres. She met Paula Rivera, a well-known fashion photographer with distinctly Salvadoran themes in her work. By April of 2020, the collective was composed of over 40 members with Salvadoran citizenship who specialized in every genre of photography from food to street, from architectural to analogue. Since then, we have received: lectures by international photographers, spoken with regional collectives, created freelance opportunities, met during protests and shared knowledge through workshops. More importantly, our emphasis is on getting to know each other, our methods and our work.

When we start zoning in, it is important to notice that collectives help generate networks of mutual support and opportunities for visibility. A collective like Imprudencia Colectiva, which has self-generated and arranged collaborative opportunities for exposure (e.g. with news outlet Alharaca), demonstrates the need to build a centralized photographic culture in countries where the tradition seems lacking or dispersed. For women, this is more important in a field and nation permeated by patriarchal norms. One hardly hears of photographers from the region, let alone female photographers. The impact that the collective has had regionally, makes the possibility of having a strong presence in the world appear to materialize as each day goes by.

This not to say that our long-term dreams end at visibility. Just like our namesake, Prudencia Ayala, the Colectiva dreams of pursuing to earn funding for large projects, publish books, build conferences of women photographers and institute a photography school in El Salvador. To me, as a final thought, taking charge of our personal and national narratives is as much a professional pursuit as a path towards artistic awakening. As we build a bank of references and inspiration that express the Central America human condition, this has become a fertile ground to re-imagine our legacy. This is hard work, since we have always seen ourselves from the outside, usually depicted as a region torn by violence. These unexplored narratives and aesthetics distinctly differ from photography courses and galleries that centre American and European photography.

At IM-Prudencia Colectiva, we acknowledge that imaging ourselves is a long journey. In the present, however still in our infancy, we will keep growing as an established entity leading the conversation on Salvadoran and Latin American photography on regional and global platforms.