Growing Concerns

Almudena Romero’s practice uses photographic processes to reflect on issues relating to identity, representation and ideology such as the role of photography and archives in the construction of national identities. Growing Concerns is a series of collodion tintypes reflecting on the links between photography, colonialism and migration, specifically looking at how photography has contributed to the construction of shared identities as well as to create an encyclopaedic classification of the other.
Through this series of passport looking portraits of London immigrants, the artists aims to facilitate a participatory archive from a decolonial perspective, in which the photographer doesn’t choose sitters, but anyone who considered themselves an immigrant could decide to take the time and energy to participate. In exchange participants gained knowledge of the process and kept a copy of their tintype, this way both parties, photographer and participant, benefited from the experience.