The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices Under Chile’s Dictatorship. By Ángeles Donoso Macaya

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in the United States, scholar Deborah Willis observed that “photographers witnessing both brutal and social assaults created a new visual consciousness for the American public, establishing a visual language of ‘testifying’ about their individual and collective experience.”¹ Willis’ words speak to the objectives of Ángeles Donoso Macaya’s The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices Under Chile’s Dictatorship, which argues that photography became a “paramount documentary tool to denounce, protest, and challenge the dictatorship” of Augusto Pinochet (4). Photos did not just provide evidence of the horror of his regime, but through various modes, photographers defied official narratives, fostered solidarity and collaboration, and, indeed, testified about the various individual and collective experiences in Pinochet’s Chile to open up political spaces of resistance. Donoso Macaya argues that these acts also expanded the way photography could be conceptualized as a field of study. Through a series of emblematic case studies, the book makes a powerful argument about the multi-faceted visual and social impact of photography under repressive rule.

The first chapter explores the creation and uses of the now iconic images of the disappeared in Chile. These photos did not start as protest photographs. Rather, desperate family members brought these family portraits and ID photos to the areas outside the National Stadium after Pinochet’s takeover in attempts to find sympathetic journalists or Red Cross members who were going into the stadium and might have information about their missing loved ones. While born spontaneously in that fraught moment, in 1976 the Vicaría de la Solidaridad began systematic work to archive the detained and disappeared, in order “to keep track of, compile, organize, and analyze the dictatorship’s distinct repressive methods” (50). The Vicaría then reproduced these photos to create a file, and the originals were photographed, touched up, and re-photographed again. Thus standardized, they were used for legal claims, in a book, and in artistic protests both during and after the dictatorship. Donoso Macaya is adept at engaging in debates about the performativity involved in these photographs’ uses, as well as the fundamental role they played during the dictatorship to render visible the crime of disappearances. For all the valid critiques scholars have waged about how madres groups sought to frame their children as innocent victims and strip away political agency to achieve their political goals, Donoso Macaya displays the way these photos provided a strong counterpoint to government propaganda and raised the issue of disappearances to the public consciousness.

The second chapter focuses on the Lonquén case where, through the work of the Vicaría, authorities unearthed a clandestine cemetery of fifteen desaparecidos in 1978. Donoso Macaya recounts the role of photos in how the case entered the public sphere. Donoso Macaya argues that the shots by Vicaría photographers of the mine site and the human skeletal remains, bullet caps, and clothing remnants served as documentation and forensic evidence in the face of attempts by the military to cover up the incident. As such, Donoso Macaya traces how the photographs were used by various outlets to strengthen the opposition’s claims about the dictatorship’s crimes, even as justice proved elusive. She explores the role of the photos in newspapers, in a published book from 1980 (and republished in 1983), as well as two films about the case.

The third chapter starts in March 1981, with the arrest of Vicaría staffer, Luis Navarro, who was tortured and drugged over a five-day period. The irony of his arrest was that it took place as he photographed the celebration of Pinochet’s new constitution and assumption of his role as the President. In September 1980, Pinochet had conducted a rigged plebiscite where the populace had a chance to “vote” on the new constitution, as well as an eight-year extension of his rule. Under growing international scrutiny, he held the referendum and won a landslide victory. Despite using repression and voter intimidation to secure the results, he claimed that the vote affirmed the regime’s legitimacy. Then, at the celebration of this “legitimizing vote” a well-known photographer was subjected to further repression. Donoso Macaya traces how, in the aftermath of Navarro’s treatment, photographers established the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes (AFI) which led to the emergence of a “professional field of photography” (124). Freelance photographers and photojournalists created the organization as a means to ensure the safety of its members, but also to foster a collective that could distribute and critique photos from different parts of the country and the world. During a time of high repression, the AFI cultivated solidarity and the works that came out of the organization reflected the everyday political nature of photography in Chile under a dictatorship, as well as development of a professionalized space for the first time in the country.

The last chapter explores the nature of censorship under Pinochet and how independent magazines challenged a total ban on press photography that the military imposed for three months in 1984. During that period, described as the “highpoint of the violations of freedom of speech and freedom of the press,” photographers continued to resist the edict by exhibiting a two-day show of protest photos, publishing photos in a youth music and literature magazine, and replacing images in independent publications with other forms of representation to counter the military (193). Donoso Macaya explores why the dictatorship found photographs so threatening as a visual and searing representation of its harsh rule and how photographers organized to counter the ban through creative forms of protest.

Donoso Macaya’s work wades deep into the theory of photography and critical studies, which may be of less interest to some historians. But its immense value lies in the way she traces the social history of photographers who pushed the performative dimension of photography to challenge the dictatorship in various forms. Further, she provides a strong case for analyzing photographers as important social actors that contributed to defying the dictatorship’s repression through both the act of taking the photos, as well as the various ways they distributed them.

Footnotes