Can We Use Photography Against Photography? An Interview with Rolando Vázquez Melken

In this chapter, Nina Mangalanayagam and Emese Mucsi are in conversation with the educator and writer Rolando Vázquez Melken to introduce the term decolonial, which the subsequent chapters in this section of the book continue to unfold. Vázquez Melken has been on the forefront of discussions and change in the Netherlands to counter colonial legacies with decolonial practices. As one of the founders of the Decolonial Summer School in the Netherlands, he is often invited to consult and discuss possibilities for undoing and unlearning a certain type of modernist knowledge formation that continues to shape our institutions and practices.

Following demands from students and artists, there has recently been a shift in western photographic practices and education, and the once marginal decolonial and postcolonial discussions have been given space within the mainstream discourse. Artists have highlighted and critically reflected on photography's entanglement with a colonial order that has informed European western knowledge paradigms. With Vázquez Melken, Mangalanayagam and Mucsi discuss some examples of how this change is unfolding and how to consider the diversities within this movement globally.