MEMORIES OF RECONCILIATION: PHOTOGRAPHY AND MEMORY IN POSTWAR PERU

This article analyzes the photographic exhibition of the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR), Yuyanapaq, and reflects on the role of photography in projects that aim to recover collective memory in the "post-conflict" period. It begins with a critical examination of the Peruvian CVR's proposal that the act of looking at images of past violence and suffering contributes to the formation of a shared, collective, and consensual memory about the origins and causes of violence and war. It suggests that this approach to memory is facilitated by an understanding of photographic images as self-evident, historical, and perceptual grounds from which individual emotions and feelings can be interpolated as part of a collective moral engagement with the past. The article argues for a critical reflection on how photographic technologies have been used both to sustain a series of partial and shifting truths about violence and to validate stereotyped visual perceptions.