In: HeLix - Dossiers zur romanischen Literaturwissenschaft, 5 (2012), pp. 163-181

Abstract

The memory of Argentina’s desaparecidos is being openly negotiated not only in public commemorative acts and the construction of monuments, but also in contemporary artwork. Photography plays a major role in artistic narratives of personal remembrance and public commemoration. This essay explores three exemplary artistic creations, all of which use photographic images in their representation of Argentina’s last military dictatorship.Marcelo Brodsky’s Buena Memoria displays childhood pictures of happier times in reminiscence of his disappeared younger brother and his best friend from school. Helen Zout uses iconic images to construct an aestheticized monument of the desaparecidos in her photo series Huellas de desapariciones. Lucila Quieto’s Arqueología de la ausencia seeks to reveal the life-long absences created in the lives of the children of the disappeared. In Quieto’s work, young adults pose next to their absent parents in projections of old family pictures, visualizing the constructedness of a post-generation’s narrative.