Abstract

This essay focuses on the ethics and aesthetics of photographic images of the Southern border crisis in Spain. It first explores the specificity of photojournalism as a visual medium with a tendency to focus on wars, social conflict, and human suffering. The essay then intervenes in the debates regarding the visual representation of pain and death by examining works by photojournalists Ildefonso Sena, Javier Balauz, José Luis Roca, and Juan Medina. In the final analysis, this essay explores the activist, political, and artistic uses of photojournalism in what we could call the Spanish necrofrontier.