Claudio Pérez: Keeping memory alive
[Memory Wall, Santiago© Claudio Pérez]
Claudio Pérez is the author of some of the most emblematic images of the struggle against the dictatorship during the 1980s. But in addition to being a photographer, he is a graphic designer, publisher, exhibition curator, cofounder of several photo agencies, teacher, human rights activist and defender of Chile’s collective memory.
Since the dark years, he has undertaken an unrelenting battle to preserve the memory of the disappeared detainees who are permanent victims of the repression (the Memory Wall in Santiago), as well as that of their families (El Amor ante el Olvido, Love in the face of oblivion). But he also pursued his involvement withChile’s indigenous peoples, affirming the place of their cultures inChile’s collective memory and identity through portraits, landscapes, representations of their rituals and even a visual dictionary for Kunza, the ancestral language of the Likan-antai people of Atacama.
This interview took place via email throughout the month of September, before and after the commemorations of the 40th anniversary of the coup d’état and in between Claudio Pérez’s exhibitions, book launches, classes and occasional travels. He has my eternal thanks for his energy and commitment.
MR: Claudio, according to your biography, you were born in Santiago in 1957 – which means that you were a teenager at the time of the military coup in 1973 – and you joined the Association of Independent Photographers (AFI) in 1983. What were you doing over the intervening decade?
CP: I wrote poetry, studied drawing and painting and left the country for four years. I went to live inBrazil, but when the massive protests against the Pinochet dictatorship started, I made my way back toChile. I felt the need to be here, to do something to overthrow the tyrant. So I showed up with an ID and a fake letter of accreditation as a foreign correspondent for an imaginary photo agency called ‘Imágen nativa’ (Native Image). The letter was even stamped with a logo that we’d carved into a potato stamp.
[Protest demonstration, Santiago, 1986 © Claudio Pérez]
MR: You were part of the so-called second generation of AFI photographers, who were younger and more oriented towards photojournalism than the founders. But on various occasions you’ve alluded to the fact that you turned away from photojournalism fairly quickly and concentrated on more documentary work because you felt that getting the right photograph ‘was starting to be more important than what was going on’, and that you were becoming ‘a terribly violent being’.
CP: First of all, when I started taking photos in 1983, I was so obsessed with the idea of denouncing the atrocities of the dictatorship that I couldn’t afford to make ‘art’ photography. All of my energy had to go into that aim of exposing what was going on.
[Plaza de Armas, Santiago, 1984 © Claudio Pérez]
[Augusto Pinochet during the Te Deum, Santiago Cathedral, 1986 © Claudio Pérez]
But I’m not sure you could say I turned away from photojournalism because I’ve always continued working for the press. On the other hand, it’s true that I became aware of the degree of violence we were thrown into and the fact that if you didn’t take it into account, it could trap you and there would be no way out.
[Paseo Huérfanos, Santiago, after a national protest demonstration, 1986 © Claudio Pérez]
MR: All of your work with photography seems to involve collective activity: the press agencies Cono Sur and IMA that you cofounded, the group exhibitions you curated (‘Chile: La Memoria Oxidada’ in Modena in 1997, ‘Chile 30 años 1973-2003’ in Rome in 2003), the collection of photographic travel notes (El artificio del Lente/Apuntes de viaje Chile 98/00) organised by another key member of the AFI, Héctor López. Not to mention the publishing structure the two of you recently set up, Pérez López Editores.
Do you see this as one of the lessons of the struggles against the dictatorship – and one which has now become a means of resisting the prevailing individualism?
CP: I’d say that collective work is a constant for me because I believe that all human activity should have a collective dimension: coming together and joining forces around projects which will develop collective memory.
MR: In this respect, the Muro de la Memoria (Memory Wall) in Santiago, which was inaugurated in 2001, seems exemplary: a photographic monument to the detainees who were ‘disappeared’ during the dictatorship, located under the Bulnés Bridge, where some 20 people were executed by the army in September and October 1973.
How did you bring together all the photographs lining the wall?
CP: When I started the project, I thought that all the images would be in a single, well-ordered archive. But the reality turned out to be different. In the course of my research, when I went to see human rights organisations and government authorities, I discovered to my great surprise that there were various archives, with varying quantities of photographs, rather than a unified collection.
That was the first reality to be confronted. The second was that there were not photographs for all the permanent victims. Out of the 1,197 disappeared detainees (according the official figures from 1999), I managed to put together one big archive of 896 photos. Which meant that a second phase of the project became necessary: finding the missing photos. To that end, I travelled all overChilein search of the disappeared detainees’ families. Their photographs. And I found an additional 50 or so.
El Amor ante el Olvido (Love in the face of Oblivion), 2007-2008 © Claudio Pérez]
El Amor ante el Olvido (Love in the face of Oblivion), 2007-2008 © Claudio Pérez]
Another very surprising aspect of the project is that from the very beginning, the photos I fund were not only official IDs but also snapshots from their everyday lives. In other words, glimpses of some of the most jubilant moments of their lives. And for that reason, these images became one big family album.
[Memory Wall, Santiago, individual photos and photomontage of the wall (detail) © Claudio Pérez]
[Memory Wall, Santiago, photomontage of the entire wall © Claudio Pérez]
MR: How has the Memory Wall been integrated into daily life in Santiago?
CP: I have to tell you that today this mural has been completely abandoned. To begin with, it’s an outrage that the wall is located in an outlying part of the city, a deserted area where it’s dangerous to go at night. As a result, the plaques with the images have been stolen, the lighting has been vandalised, the faces have been painted over and many of the photos are now faded because of the exposure to pollution and light.
This isn’t the place we chose at the beginning of the project but it’s the only one they offered me. You have to remember that this was during the presidency of the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei (1994-2000) and the government wasn’t very enthusiastic about showing this mural in a place with a lot of inhabitants.
[Memory Wall, Santiago (detail) © Claudio Pérez]
For me, it’s a pity that the goals with regards to collective memory and daily presence have been thwarted by the site where the monument is located. The idea was precisely that it would be part of urban life, that it would integrate our collective memory so that these acts of making people disappear would never occur inChileagain.
MR: You’ve also been exploring the cultures of native peoples for many years. This is obviously another part of Chile’s collective memory, with its traditions and its violence. Your ongoing series Ritualidad Queshwa (2004-), in particular, has something unreal about it, like a recurring dream.
[Ritualidad Queshwa (Quechua Rituality)], 2004- © Claudio Pérez]
[Ritualidad Queshwa (Quechua Rituality)], 2004- © Claudio Pérez]
CP: I’ve been working for the past nine years in the communities of the Alto El Loa inNorthern Chile. The project is intended to raise awareness about one of our native cultures which have refused to give in to oblivion. By preserving their customs and traditions the Quechua draw on their ancestral ceremonies to wage a kind of cultural resistance against the inequalities they face in their daily lives and work. They’ve been deprived of their water. They’ve been deprived of their lands. They’ve been deprived of their native languages. All they have left are their ceremonies, which they carry out all year long as a way of saying no to oblivion.
[Ritualidad Queshwa (Quechua Rituality)], 2004- © Claudio Pérez]
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Claudio Pérez's website:
Excerpt from the Chilean documentary Ocho Fotógrafos (Eight photographers, 2012) by Sergio Castro (in Spanish)
Next week’s interview:
Paulo Slachevsky: Dictatorship, Democracy, Diversity
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Miriam Rosen is a journalist and translator living in Paris. She writes about photography, film and the images in between the two. Most recently, she’s been a regular contributor to Le Journal de la Photographie.