{"title":"A Death Squad Dossier: Counterrevolutionary Policing, Photographs of Disappearing Identities and Evidentiary Aesthetics in Postwar Guatemala","authors":"J. Mazariegos","doi":"10.1080/03087298.2022.2118435","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article is concerned with photographic images and identity photographs utilised for military counterinsurgent policing in Guatemala City during the civil war (1960–96), in the context of Latin America’s Cold War. The article explores the historical conditions that made militarised policing and its photographic record possible in Guatemala, focusing on a dossier produced in the early 1980s known as Diario Militar. The article pays attention to aesthetic and evidentiary regimes that rely on the indexical force of photographs under circumstances in which indexicality fails. In doing so, it elaborates on counterrevolutionary policing as a way of seeing and not being seen, producing photographic images that at once identify political subjects and attempt to disappear their identities, and how these photographic imaginaries are being re-signified in contemporary struggles for justice in postwar Guatemala.","PeriodicalId":13024,"journal":{"name":"History of Photography","volume":"45 1","pages":"351 - 362"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"History of Photography","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2022.2118435","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This article is concerned with photographic images and identity photographs utilised for military counterinsurgent policing in Guatemala City during the civil war (1960–96), in the context of Latin America’s Cold War. The article explores the historical conditions that made militarised policing and its photographic record possible in Guatemala, focusing on a dossier produced in the early 1980s known as Diario Militar. The article pays attention to aesthetic and evidentiary regimes that rely on the indexical force of photographs under circumstances in which indexicality fails. In doing so, it elaborates on counterrevolutionary policing as a way of seeing and not being seen, producing photographic images that at once identify political subjects and attempt to disappear their identities, and how these photographic imaginaries are being re-signified in contemporary struggles for justice in postwar Guatemala.
期刊介绍:
History of Photography is an international quarterly devoted to the history, practice and theory of photography. It intends to address all aspects of the medium, treating the processes, circulation, functions, and reception of photography in all its aspects, including documentary, popular and polemical work as well as fine art photography. The goal of the journal is to be inclusive and interdisciplinary in nature, welcoming all scholarly approaches, whether archival, historical, art historical, anthropological, sociological or theoretical. It is intended also to embrace world photography, ranging from Europe and the Americas to the Far East.