The border, the remains, and the slip

a look into in involuntary imagetic registers

Abstract

The article analyses a collection of Archivo Provincial de la Memoria de Córdoba, Argentina, named Registro de Extremistas to reflect upon involuntary traces of State agents in negative prints photographed at a clandestine torture and assassination center. We invest ourselves in what scapes the attempt to control what should be framed in record photographies as we focus on agent’s body portions printed on negatives which have, by circumstance, not entirely got rid of. Nevertheless the prisoners seen in foreground, whom have been forced into the scene, we look for the second layer of the image, in which figure State agents, attached to their crimes through photographic register. We shift our attention to the slips and traces in order to shape a contrafile to produce meanings from the observation of their elusive presence. Therefore we argue that the gesture of taking pictures has been configured as another violence perpetrated by the repressive Argentinian dictatorship’s against its victims.