The Insubordination of Photography

“The first book to focus fully on the complex and creative uses of photography to resist state violence, atrocity, censorship, and widespread authoritarianism in Chile between 1973 and 1990.”—Antonio J. Traverso, editor of Southern Screens: Cinema, Culture and the Global South  

“Working with an important and understudied archive of Chilean dictatorship-era photographs and photographic practices, this book develops nuanced readings that challenge conventional notions of the photograph as a document.”—Alessandro Fornazzari, author of Speculative Fictions: Chilean Culture, Economics, and the Neoliberal Transition

“An illuminating analysis of photography during the Chilean dictatorship. Donoso Macaya expands the field of photography theory by showing how the very medium used by the dictatorship to control the field of vision can be mobilized by oppositional groups to break that control.”—Marianne Hirsch, coauthor of School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference

After Augusto Pinochet rose to power in Chile in 1973, his government abducted, abused, and executed thousands of his political opponents. The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship is the first book to analyze how various collectives, organizations, and independent media used photography to expose and protest the crimes of Pinochet’s authoritarian regime.

Ángeles Donoso Macaya discusses the ways human rights groups such as the Vicariate of Solidarity used portraits of missing persons in order to make forced disappearances visible. She also calls attention to forensic photographs that served as incriminating evidence of government killings in the landmark Lonquén case. Donoso Macaya argues that the field of documentary photography in Chile was challenged and shaped by the precariousness of the nation’s politics and economics and shows how photojournalists found creative ways to challenge limitations imposed on the freedom of the press.

In a culture saturated by disinformation and cover-ups and restricted by repression and censorship, photography became an essential tool to bring the truth to light. Featuring never-before-seen photographs and other archival material, this book reflects on the integral role of images in public memory and issues of reparation and justice.

Ángeles Donoso Macaya, associate professor of Spanish at Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY, is coeditor of Latinas/os on the East Coast: A Critical Reader.