Revelations

Abstract

In the project, Contradesaparecido (Counterdisappeared), Gustavo Germano and Vanina de Monte delicately map the life of Eduardo Germano, who was eighteen years old when Argentina’s military-civic dictatorship kidnapped him on December 17th, 1976. His life, like all lives, started far before his birth. In this photo essay, echoes of his life continue to resonate decades after his disappearance. This project, a family scrapbook of sorts, and its documentary weight, unfolds through a visual narrative that explores the different spaces marked by his transit through the world. A succession of images almost absent of text present a story to be deciphered from subtle clues. The space of the family photo album is interrupted by the authors’ narration of a violent collective history. As the protagonist’s life is (re)constructed, the viewer begins to identify his facial features, to retrace his life’s steps through his affective experiences, the places he occupied, his political convictions, and the personal documents left behind.