The Insubordination of Photography

Abstract

The Insubordination of Photography studies the documentary practices of photography devised by different collectives (relatives of the detained-disappeared, church organizations, visual artists, and photographers), organizations, and independent media, which resisted, defied, and participated in the downfall of the dictatorial regime in Chile. Given a milieu saturated by disinformation and cover-ups of all kinds and restricted by repression and censorship, how does one demand and make visible the truth about the (denied) crime of forced disappearances under Pinochet’s Chilean dictatorship? At a moment when resistance was gaining more prevalence on the streets and in the independent media, how could one ensure the safety of independent photographers and challenge censorship? How does one convey denunciation when images are prohibited? The objects studied in this book emerged as answers to these pressing questions. Different documentary practices of photography were devised to make visible the crime of forced disappearances in the public space (chapter one), to produce a credible visual record of forensic evidence in a paramount legal case (chapter two), to denounce and resist precarity and protect the work of independent photographers and reporters (chapter three), and to challenge—and ridicule—censorship and the limitations imposed on freedom of the press (chapter four). These practices not only changed the depth of field, which the dictatorship attempted to control by all necessary means, but also, and perhaps more importantly, strengthened the ideology and the public space of the opposition while expanding the photographic field.