ABSTRACT
As rituals of separation and reunion, emblems of distance and memory, tokens of absent others and past places, props for nostalgia and memory and prompts for narratives and self-reflection, photographs and photographic practices have long been a central product of transnational movement and communication, as well as a key element in the symbolic infrastructure of migration. As testimonies to self-fashioning and adventure, records of new selves and new homes, they have figured prominently in diasporic exchanges. Yet, strangely, despite the fact that photographs are often used profusely to illustrate accounts of migration, relatively little has been written about the way that photographic practices mediate migration experience.
