Student profiles
Daniela Mayer
Email: daniela.mayer@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Website: www.danielamayer.com
Thesis Title
Institution
Supervisors
Dr. Luke Skrebowski
Dr. Emilia Terracciano
Research Summary
In 1979, the French theorist Roland Barthes surmised, “Every exploration is an appropriation.” Although written about tourists visiting cultural institutions, this statement also applies to photographers documenting historically marginalized communities of color. From the 1860s onwards, photographers traversed distant national, class, and cultural boundaries; their transcommunal convergences resulted in novel creative outputs that span the spectrum between activism and allyship, appropriation and exploitation. Contemporary understanding of ethnographic photography as a predominantly male, imperialist pursuit is complicated by the integration of women in the field, especially after the global rise of leftist identity politics movements (1960s–70s). A historically oppressed group, women in the 1970s reconciled traditional, gendered behavioral expectations for reticence and self-effacement with an ethos of female empowerment promoted by the women’s liberation movement. These charged cultural conditions led to incongruous outcomes by embedded female photographers documenting marginalized communities; while their photographs captured their subjects’ vulnerability, their practices maintained their agency—empathetic and otherwise—over those same subjects. My research centers on case studies that explore the cross-cultural exchanges of several women photographers through an interdisciplinary framework that merges decolonial, feminist, and critical visual analysis alongside international identity politics. By examining how power relationships were navigated by women working outside their nations of origin—members of an innately marginalized group destabilized from their usual environs and behavioral norms—I aim to elaborate the gender, race, and class relations that inflected women’s photographic practices linked to the Global South during the 1970s.
Research Interests
Photography and Photojournalism, Transnational Artist Networks, Modern and Contemporary Art Across the Americas, Socio-Political Histories and Identity Politics
Publications
“Indigenous Humor and Resistance Shines at The Photography Show.” Hyperallergic, April 25, 2025. https://hyperallergic.com/1006446/indigenous-humor-and-resistance-shines-at-aipad-the-photography-show/.
“The Queer Politics of Hélio Oiticica’s Babylonian Cinema.” Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine 15 (March 2025): 11-46. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14941036. Peer-reviewed.
“Ouroboros: A Conversation with Christina Barrera on Art and The Cyclical Nature of Revolution.” (New York: MAMA Projects, 2024). https://www.danielamayer.com/s/para-todos-todo-zine.pdf.
“Gimme WORLD-SHELTER: The Private Cosmococas and Hélio Oiticica’s Relationship with Domestic Space.” (New York: Hunter College Art Galleries, 2023). http://www.leubsdorfgallery.org/cosmic-shelter-zine.
“An Outlaw in Babylon: Hélio Oiticica’s Transgressive Strategies in the Margins of New York, 1970–1978” (Master’s Thesis, Hunter College, 2021). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/818.
“Looking Also Happens in Time: Memory Traces in Robert Rauschenberg’s Night Shades and Phantoms.” In Robert Rauschenberg: Night Shades and Phantoms, 1991, edited by Emily Braun and Julia Blaut, 10–19. New York: Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2020. https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/collaborations/hunter-college-cuny-fall-2018-spring-2019.
“Moving Towards Participation: The Proto-Participatory Innovations of Kinetic Art.” Northwestern Art Review 16 (Summer 2016): 16–23. https://issuu.com/nuartreview/docs/nar15.
Mayer, Daniela. “Hidden in Plain Sight: “Secret” Cult Temples in the Culturally Diverse City of Dura-Europos.” Ink & Image 8 (Spring 2016): 17-28. https://issuu.com/inkandimage/docs/ink_image8.