The Insubordination of Photography

“The first book to focus fully on the complex and creative uses of photography to resist state violence, atrocity, censorship, and widespread authoritarianism in Chile between 1973 and 1990.”—Antonio J. Traverso, editor of Southern Screens: Cinema, Culture and the Global South

“Working with an important and understudied archive of Chilean dictatorship-era photographs and photographic practices, this book develops nuanced readings that challenge conventional notions of the photograph as a document.”—Alessandro Fornazzari, author of Speculative Fictions: Chilean Culture, Economics, and the Neoliberal Transition

“An illuminating analysis of photography during the Chilean dictatorship. Donoso Macaya expands the field of photography theory by showing how the very medium used by the dictatorship to control the field of vision can be mobilized by oppositional groups to break that control.”—Marianne Hirsch, coauthor of School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference

“Donoso Macaya offers an engaging, multidisciplinary, and well-researched analysis of Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship and in the process contributes to understanding the complexity and political implications of photography.”—Choice

“A necessary, timely, and original book. . . . Donoso Macaya skillfully and carefully has traced the ways photographs travel, incite public discussion, move from one setting to another, and

transform.”—H-Net

“Enriches the existing literature on the Chilean dictatorship by taking seriously the social and political power of photography. . . . Excellent and necessary.”—Latin Americanist

“Through a series of emblematic case studies, the book makes a powerful argument about the multi-faceted visual and social impact of photography under repressive rule. . . . Its immense value lies in the way [Donoso Macaya] traces the social history of photographers who pushed the performative dimension of photography to challenge the dictatorship in various forms.”—Journal of Social History

“A valuable addition to the literature examining the social construction and performativity of images as well as the use of photography as a civil practice, areas that are essential to understanding the political uses and consequences of protest photography.”—The Americas

“A very thoroughly researched and original contribution to studies of Chilean visual culture.”—Bulletin of Spanish Studies