Visibility as Power: Photography as Art and Activism

This Empowerment & Development talk is a sit-down conversation with photographer Xgenia Damo, whose work uses portraiture as a way to start conversations, challenge shame, and create space for people to see themselves as they are. Drawing from a lifelong, evolving relationship with photography, the discussion explores how image-making can move beyond aesthetics into activism, visibility, and cultural shift. Together, we’ll talk about bodies, consent, memory, and representation — how photography can honour lived experience, disrupt narrow ideas of beauty and sexuality, and transform being seen from something vulnerable into something empowering.