Evidence: Photos document the brutality of a dictatorship

Photojournalist Enrique Shore captured the work of a commission investigating the disappearance of tens of thousands of Argentine dissidents.

At the end of 1983, after seven years of a brutal military dictatorship in my home country Argentina, one of the first measures of the newly-elected democratic president Raúl Alfonsín was to set up the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), to be presided by esteemed writer Ernesto Sábato. It was to be a special commission to investigate the fate of the “disappeared.”

Between 1976 and 1983, the de facto governments of successive military juntas waged what became known as Argentina’s “Dirty War” during which some 30,000 political dissidents were seized and disappeared. They became known as “Los Desaparecidos.”

I had the honor and the responsibility to serve as the official photographer of the special commission and now, when some people want to leave aside that past and foolishly “look forward” pretending to forget that part of history, I feel it is more necessary than ever to keep in mind what happened at that time, to prevent it from ever happening again.

During a few months in 1984, the commission received thousands of testimonies from relatives of people who had disappeared, and from hundreds who were illegally detained and in many cases brutally tortured but still managed to survive.

The job of the commission was to collect these testimonies, document and verify them and compile a report that was later known as “Nunca Más” (Never Again). The report was then used as the main evidence for the trial of the military juntas — a process that got international recognition as an extraordinary and unique example of a democratic government judging state terrorism crimes from a dictatorship that had been in power until immediately before.

Many films have been made on this subject. One of the first ones, “The Official Story” (“La Historia Oficial,” released as “The Official Version” in the UK) won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 1985.

The 2022 film “Argentina, 1985” was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars, while a documentary called “The Trial” by director Ulises de la Orden showed highlights of the over 350 hours of that historic trial that set a worldwide example for human rights legal processes.

And now to mark the 40th anniversary of the CONADEP, I created a photo exhibition called “Evidence” (Evidencias) in Buenos Aires, of photos taken for the CONADEP during visits to former clandestine detention centers along with survivors, and other images I took of related human rights protests and personalities that give context of that time.

Most images have been unpublished until now. I was moved by the amazing media reception, which included reports in national television newscasts, newspapers and radio.

I never could have imagined four decades ago that this job would still be important so long afterwards.

Revisiting a painful past

I participated in a roundtable where a lawyer involved in many human rights trials said he had used one of my photos as evidence in a trial the day before — 40 years after it was taken!

This was to show how a place was at that time, as it has since been completely transformed. Other photos I took will be evidence in a trial that will only start next month.

In the inauguration of the exhibition — which is open at the Asociación Mutual Israelita in Buenos Aires until the end of May — a woman who works in what is now a “Memory Site,” a former clandestine detention center in the Hospital Posadas, a public hospital in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, brought a photo of mine that I had not included in my exhibition.

The photo just shows a man pointing to a place in the floor of a building — I did not include it because I thought it was not so interesting visually.

But to my surprise, she said that thanks to that photo they were able to take a sample of that precise place in the floor, and sent it to a specialized lab to be analyzed. The result showed blood and they were able to do a DNA test and verify the exact identity of a man killed in that place. This happened earlier this year, 40 years after the photo was taken.

So there is still use for these photos, even after such a long time. This reassures me that this was the most important job I ever did.

Verifying witness testimony

The photo I chose for the flyer of the exhibition is one that moves me the most. We were visiting a police precinct in Quilmes, a suburb of Buenos Aires that was used as an illegal detention center during the military dictatorship. Survivors who had been held there and had given testimony came along.

The goal of the procedure was to verify that what the witnesses had declared corresponded with the physical characteristics of the place. The prison cells were small and totally dark. At one point survivor Alfredo Maly lit a cigarette and brought the lighter to the wall. He found an inscription he made inside a prison cell where he was illegally detained and tortured. It read: “DIOS MIO AYUDAME” (“MY GOD, HELP ME”).

The wall had been painted over but the inscription was still readable. We all cried. Nobody expected to still find that evidence so long afterwards.

Other memorable photos included in my exhibit were taken during a visit by the commission to the police headquarters in Mendoza, an Argentine province close to the Chilean border. A group of survivors had been detained there in secret. We took photos of the exact prison cells where they had been kept.

At some point we opened a prison cell and it was full of books. These, along with many other items, had been looted by the military when people were being detained. All things of value, like TV sets and furniture, the kidnappers had sold for profit, but for some reason the books had been thrown into that prison cell.

Bringing murderers to trial

It was surreal to find that after many years. Then, Silvia Ontivero, a woman who was one of the survivors took a close look at the pile of books, and to everybody’s amazement found one of her own: “Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina” by Eduardo Galeano, a book that had been banned during the military government. The first page had a dedication by her brother. This was later verified by legal experts and became another conclusive piece of evidence used in the trial of the military juntas.

The exhibition includes many images of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, probably the best known human rights organization in Argentina. One of them shows the British rock star Sting, embracing a mother during a concert. He had dedicated one of his songs, “They Dance Alone,” to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Another photo taken in the last months of the military dictatorship shows Mothers of Plaza de Mayo protesting in front of the Argentine government house under pouring rain. Another of Estela de Carlotto, the president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, at her office in Buenos Aires in 1987 with a poster showing photos of babies who were kidnapped by the military during the dictatorship.

The main goal of that organization is to recover these babies born while their mothers were illegally detained and in most cases killed after giving birth, while the babies were given in adoption to military families. As many as 500 babies are believed to have been born in captivity.

In my old photo some 35 faces are showing, and now decades later 133 people have recovered their identity thanks to the group’s efforts. They are still searching for the rest.

Another photo shows human rights protesters wearing white masks representing the disappeared in 1985. Thousands marched in silence. It was so powerful that they never did that again. It was just too disturbing.

Finally, my exhibition also includes photos I currently make, mostly of small singing birds flying. While that representation of freedom is a stark contrast with the others, the underlying intention of representing “evidence” is actually the same.

After a bird flies by you may see nothing more, but that does not mean that it didn’t happen. Documentary photography can help keep the memory of things that once existed even if they no longer appear visible.

For people who want to deny historic evidence, a photo can be a powerful obstacle.

Three questions to consider:

1. What was important about the work of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons?
2. Why should a country remember its dark times rather than let people forget and move on?
3. Can you think of photographs that captured an important part of your nation’s history that some people would like to forget?

Enrique Shore is a News Decoder correspondent, photographer and pictures editor with three decades experience covering World Cups, Olympics, presidential elections, summits and the first Gulf War. He was Reuters chief photographer for Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, then based in Madrid in charge of the Iberian Peninsula. He later looked after media clients in Spain and Portugal. He is currently an independent photographer, editor and consultant based in New York.

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