Memories of Reconciliation: Photography and Memory in Post-War Peru

This article takes the Peruvian exhibition Yuyanapaq by the Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR) as a starting point for reflecting on the place of photographs in projects whose aim is to recover collective memory in "post-conflict" situations. We begin with a critical analysis of the Peruvian CVR's proposition that the act of viewing images of past violence and suffering contributes to the formation of a shared, collective, and consensual memory regarding the origins and causes of war and violence. We suggest that this approach is facilitated by an understanding of photographic images as self-evident, historical, and perceptual arguments from which individual emotions and sensations can be engaged as part of a collective moral approach to the past. The present article argues that it is necessary to critically analyze how photographic technologies have been used to underpin a series of partial and shifting truths about violence and to validate stereotyped visual perceptions.