Political Landscapes and Photographic Artefacts in Post-Dictatorship Argentina

Familiar Faces is an interdisciplinary collection of cutting-edge research by leading Argentine scholars and practitioners working on the complex relationship between photography, memory and the legacy of Argentina’s most recent dictatorship (1976-1983). This edited collection offers a theoretically rich, empirically-informed and diverse exploration of the role of photography in Argentina’s memorial, political and artistic landscape.2023 marks forty years since the end of the military dictatorship, during which 30,000 people were disappeared or killed by the state. Over the decades, vernacular and professional photographs have been central to the Argentine struggle for justice. They were used to not only protest the disappearances under the dictatorship and denounce the authorities, but also as primary tools for political and social activism, and for remembering the disappeared.With contributions from leading Argentina-based anthropologists, curators, art scholars and photographers, Familiar Faces moves beyond traditional considerations of representation focusing instead on photography’s unique ability to be continuously re-imagined as a tool of memory, mourning and political and justice activism. In so doing, it considers the diverse uses of: press photography; artistic practice; photographs of the disappeared in domestic rituals; photographs of the inmates of torture centres; the reclamation of images taken by the dictatorial state for memorial and activist purposes.Familiar Faces comes at a crucial moment in Argentine memory politics, framed by 45th anniversary of the establishment of the military dictatorship (2021) and the 40th anniversary of the return of democracy (2023). While firmly rooted in this context, it also contributes to wider, global debates about the increasingly pervasive role of the photographic image in memorial, justice and activist processes related to large-scale, state-sponsored violence.
Fil: Fortuny, Natalia Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina