Photography and Disappearance in Argentina: Sacredness and Rituals in the Face of Death

Abstract

This chapter analyses the evidential force of the photographs of the disappeared, and the role they play in rituals that accompany mourning processes in Argentina. The corpus of material chosen for analysis, from an ethnographic perspective, stems from my fieldwork in the cities of La Plata, Córdoba, and the villages of Calilegua and Tumbaya in Jujuy province. All these places experienced the disappearance of hundreds of citizens during the period of state terrorism under the most recent Argentine dictatorship (1976–1983). In many ways, this chapter is an itinerary of the relationships between photography and memory that allows for an examination of how images circulate, are appropriated, used, sacralised or banalised in the face of violence and politics. I am particularly interested in opening up a conversation about what people do with photographs. What are the images’ meanings and the emotions ascribed to them?.