Three Strategies for Subverting Representation during the 2019 Chilean Revolt

by: , June 25, 2022

This article aims to look at photographic practices in light of recent political events in Chile, focusing on the following questions: How to overcome the colonial impositions created by the photographic regime in light of new political struggle in Chile, what role have algorithms used by corporations played, and how can they be subverted? I discuss how the government’s use of new technology, such as algorithms, data analysis, facial recognition, and GPS data location, has reframed the practice of documentary photography. I draw on the work of Ariella Azoulay (2008) and Angeles Donoso (2020) to understand the political dimension of the photographic apparatus, to analyse how photographers and those they have photographed have created a new set of strategies to resist political persecution.

On 7 October 2019, I was walking near Pedro de Valdivia metro station in Santiago, Chile. When I was there, a significant number of school pupils were gathering in the same place. I remember observing them as they grew in number. The police, in uniforms akin to the Ninja Turtles, were part of the units that specialised in mass control and, as would later become apparent, were not prepared for what came next. In fact, no-one in the government accurately estimated the response needed to manage the sequence of events that was to follow.

 

Fig. 1. Students waiting near a window shop of a bank branch protected with a zinc plate. It can be read: ‘Piñera (Chilean president) you misplaced badly’. ‘The wall speaks what the press silence’. October 2019. Photo: Rosario Montero Prieto. Courtesy of the artist.

 

As I continued my walk, all the students marched together to jump the metro turnstiles in protest against the rising ticket prices (Cooperativa 2019). The violence that followed was fierce. Police officers treated the youngsters as if they were adults, and images of violence and repression went viral. The first factor that triggered this chain of events was the increase in Santiago’s public transport fares, which came into effect on Sunday October 6, 2019. As the days passed, the number of public transport fare evaders increased, and several violent incidents occurred inside the capital’s metro stations. Weeks went by, and a massive call for a civil demonstration spread on social media (mostly through private WhatsApp groups, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook), inviting everyone to be part of a historic gathering on October 18, 2019. What sparked this massive demonstration was a mixture of components that created generalised discontent due to decades of inequality produced by the current neoliberal model (Salazar 2019). The phrase ‘no es por 30 pesos, es por 30 años’ (‘It is not 30 pesos, it is 30 years’) was everywhere (Interferencia 2019). The message was that the cause of the protests was no longer the rising ticket prices, but the years of ‘neoliberal socio-economic model inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship’ (Somma et al. 2020:2). This model privileges the elite private sector and creates inequalities ‘with lower-quality public services for the majority and expensive private ones for the well-off.’(ibid.). This sparked massive demonstrations, which led to severe disturbances in Santiago, which eventually spread to all regions of Chile. As a consequence (according to the official narrative), President Sebastián Piñera declared a state of emergency in the communes of Greater Santiago, and a curfew was enforced on the night of Saturday 19 October 2019. The state of emergency was in place for more than 600 days (it ended on 1 October 2021), although it was officially justified as a COVID-19 health regulation.

 

Fig. 2. A balcony faces one of the main streets where protesters gather. The sign reads: ‘No Fear’. ‘Abort fear’. ‘Until dignity becomes custom’. October 2019. Photo: Rosario Montero Prieto. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Although the immediate cause was attributed to the transport fare hike, public statements soon exposed the actual causes: the high cost of living (in 2019, Santiago was the second most expensive city in Latin America), low pensions, the high price of medication and health care, a general rejection of the political class, and increasing disillusionment in national institutions, manifested by the population’s criticism of the current Chilean Constitution (Labarca et al. 2019). The protests have been referred to as the ‘worst civil unrest’ (El Mostrador 2019) to have occurred in Chile since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in 1989. The rise in violence, and the number of civilians injured increased by the day, and cases of torture and other forms of harassment at the hands of the Armed Forces and Law Enforcement were reported (Amnesty International 2021). Investigations carried out by organisations such as Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights determined that serious human rights violations had been committed by Chilean state officials (Montes 2019), which bring back the trauma and experiences related to the crimes against humanity carried out by Pinochet’s regime.

 

Fig. 3. Protesters near Plaza Dignidad. November 2019. Photo: Rosario Montero Prieto. Courtesy of the artist.

 

The Logic of Truth and The Logic of Surveillance

During the time of the protests, the omnipresent word was ‘dignity.’ Many took to the streets, and in them, as Judith Butler points out, ‘bodies in their plurality lay claim to the public’ reconfiguring the materiality of what public spaces are (2011:1). One key gathering place in Santiago was re-named as Plaza de la Dignidad [1], it was transformed, making the material environment both a part of, and a form of support for, all actions/bodies that took place. Therefore, a series of paradoxes came to life, produced by the bodies and images appropriating, subverting, and re-signifying public space. In this context, a WhatsApp group was formed by a group of press and documentary photographers who sought to support the protestors, to organise and join forces to denounce and oppose state violence. It was as part of this digital conversation group that I first became aware of the substantive changes in photographic practice that occurred as a consequence of the surveillance strategies employed by various state agencies. Several colleagues who documented the most violent places reported that they were subject to prosecution [2] by the police, and reported problems with the protesters. The fact that demonstrators were unhappy about being photographed was an unusual experience for those dedicated to the photography of social movements, and was an issue that was highlighted through several exchanges that took place in this social network conversation. Photographers in this group explained that many of the protesters felt violated when they were photographed and began to demand that photographers protect their identities. Simultaneously, some photographers were arrested, and were forced to give the police their photographs as evidence, to help identify those participating in the different gatherings through face recognition software and the scouring of social media profiles. Some of them had their files requisitioned through court orders, and therefore most protesters felt vulnerable as a result of being photographed. State agencies used the images to identify the faces of those who may have participated in marches or events classified as particularly violent by the security services. Taking advantage of all images to easily locate people on social networks through facial recognition algorithms and features for identifying profiles on networks such as Facebook and Instagram, the police in Chile used these technologies to intimidate and arrest young people who participated in the demonstrations. I started to delve into this conversation, asking them how they overcame these concerns; first, through the WhatsApp group named Fotodoc, and then through private continuation of around ten of these interactions via private email or WhatsApp.

The use of photography as a way to identify and control those who opposed the state reveals continuities with the historical paradigm of photography as a colonial tool of governance (Pinney 1997). It is on this axis between colonialism, control, and representation that I would like to place these reflections. Specifically, in this article I observe contemporary documentary photographic practices in Chile in an attempt to critically expose the agencies involved in photographic practices in the context of the Chilean revolt. In doing so, I analyse the current political context, and explore how new facial recognition technologies have changed both aesthetics and resistance practices. In particular, I will focus on certain symbolic practices: first, on the camouflage strategies of the protesters (make-up and face coverings), and second, on the strategies used by photographers to subvert the photographic apparatus by avoiding close-up shots, and retouching images to erase facial recognition options. Therefore, my aim in this text is not just to denounce the state persecution that documentary practice has faced, but to consider how the photographic apparatus can be appropriated and re-signified by a given culture. This argument is in line with the work of Angeles Donoso (2020), who discusses documentary photography in Chile, explaining how ‘photography instigates and facilitates the alteration and transformation of photographs into something else’ (Donoso 2020:21). Or what Ariella Aïsha Azoulay (2008) calls ‘the civil imagination,’ referring to photographic practices that create strategies of subversion. In this text, I focus on analysing how photography has historically been both a tool for oppression and a colonial apparatus, as well as being a means for resistance that has been appropriated to re-inscribe official narratives,  redefining the creation of images as an anti-colonial practice.

 

Fig. 4. A protester with a sign that reads: we are not ok. October 2019. Photo: Rosario Montero Prieto. Courtesy of the artist.

 

As Jacques Rancière writes, producing a text about photography always implies being confronted by photography as the object of a two-fold question: ‘The question of its origin (and consequently their truth content) and the question of their end or purpose, the uses they are put to, and the effects they result in’ (Rancière 2004:21), are in constant tension between the indexical property of photography [3] and the process of displacement and re-appropriation that they may undergo. Addressing the tension between ‘the logic of fiction and the logic of facts’ (Rancière 2004:35), and attempting to break this dichotomy in the process of construction of meaning within a particular context, has been central to my research on the use of photography as a form of resistance in Chile. In this sense, it will be relevant to review how meaning has been constructed and used, and the problematic dynamic that shifts between reality and fiction. In other words, the indexed ownership of the photograph and the process of displacement and reappropriation that they may undergo. In the case of documentary photography, this friction is between truth and fiction, which inhabits every photographic act. Therefore, every choice becomes decisive, since the purpose of photography, or what Bourdieu (2004) refers to as its ‘social function,’ is to point to and reveal an event. Therefore, the resulting images uploaded to press newsfeeds or Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter become categorised by keywords, indexing reality, that can later be archived, analysed, and written into history. In the case of documenting the Chilean revolt, photography is situated between the indexical (a document that is intended to be true), and the anti-surveillance creative practices that I explore in this text.

 

Fig. 5. 8M. Santiago, Chile. Women with their faces painted. March 2020. Photo: Rosario Montero Prieto. Courtesy of the artist.

 

The relation between photography and colonial violence is central to my reflections here. My research both supports and complicates Rubinstein’s argument that ‘post-colonial photography relies on the same representational logic and on the same strategies of visual appropriation that it attempts to critique in colonialism’ (Rubinstein 2013:8). In my work I seek to observe the different resistance practices that give agency to those who portray and are portrayed, mapping those other views that entail anti-colonial resistance. This provides the space to argue that photography is not only a colonial tool, but also has the potential to be re-inscribed and re-thought, forming an appropriate component for a decolonial project. In line with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, in her text ‘Sociology of the Image’ (2015), where she proposes that while observing something, it is important not to be an instrument in the service of another (western knowledge). For her, it is relevant to observe the particular position one occupies that takes into account the material constraints one faces, thus problematising the position of the observer in relation to their colonialism/unconscious elitism (Rivera-Cusicanqui 2015). In this regard, I write as a photographer and as a protester, and I try to understand from my own colonised identity, while questioning power structures. This enables thinking of this localised photographic practice not as a demonstration of the exoticisms of a deep and wild America, but rather as a strategic and rebellious dwelling that uses and appropriates the apparatus of photography to create new relations among those who pose, the space, the photographer, and the photograph.

The History & The Apparatus

In this sense, contemporary documentary photography in Chile has strong roots in rebellious strategy, particularly in relation to those independent photographers who were devoted to denouncing repression during the dictatorship of the 1980s. Throughout the military regime, the Union of Graphic Reporters were closely linked with the official press, mainly because the National Directorate of Social Communication (DINACOS) prevented the dissemination of ‘unofficial’ photographs in the media. This was the context in which the Association of Independent Photographers (AFI) emerged. Its objective was to disseminate the work and defend the lives of photographers who were at risk of becoming victims of the military dictatorship. Their training responded to the need to bring together all the photographers who worked independently, without any institutional support, and were unable to be part of the Union of Graphic Reporters (Memoria Chilena n.d.). These photographers recorded the demonstrations and protests in the streets of Santiago. As a result, the AFI’s photographic production became a testimony to the harsh reality of the military and police repression at the time (Otano 2005). These photographers expanded ‘the space of protest and resistance’ by creating strategies of subversion that went beyond the photographic act and led them to an ecology of visualisation of the actions that allowed them to be ‘published and disseminated in independent magazines and photocopied photobooks and displays in countless exhibits’ (Donoso 2020: 14), which in turn allowed them to disseminate ideas, experiences and relations, and most of all, to denounce human right violations.

Many of those in the streets in October 2019 had AFI photographers as one of their most relevant reference points, and some of the photographers who documented the dictatorship also photographed the 2019 protests. Many aimed to unveil the repression and to be part of the active resistance. The photographs taken by them are not isolated images but are part of a system of relations between the photographer, the photographed object, and all the other images taken at the same time.

Therefore, my intention is not only to problematise the resulting image, but also the way representation systems (how images are taken, how they circulate as part of information systems, where they are seen, etc.) modify the practice of photography and all its relations. By doing so, these reflections aim to consider photographic practice as an ecology of relationships, decisions, and action that goes beyond the indexical properties that reside in the photographed object (Peirce 1932). In this sense, Vilém Flusser’s (2000) notion of the agency of the technical apparatus allows us to understand and appropriate the photographic apparatus as a mixture, where the hierarchies of ‘given’ categories (Gómez & Mignolo 2012), particularly related to its technology, will be questioned. Flusser (2000) proposes analysing photography not as a ‘frozen event’ but as the series of actions and decisions that constitute it. In the case of the photographs taken during the October 2019 in Chile, we could consider the click of the camera and the predisposition to be photographed, the shooting, the manipulation of the image, and finally its use on the web. Taking a photograph is no longer just pressing a button; it has also become a software task, so photography’s creative art is delegated to a code (Kitchin & Dodge 2011). In this sense, the software has a secondary agency that is generated via high technology designed to be used in a particular manner (Kitchin & Dodge 2011). As such, software should be understood as an agent in the world that augments, complements, mediates, and regulates our lives and opens up new possibilities.

 

Fig. 6. Plaza Dignidad. Santiago, Chile. March 2020. Photo: Rosario Montero Prieto.Courtesy of the artist.

 

Regarding the case I am analysing, the information captured by the camera’s sensor, then interpreted by the camera’s algorithm into binary sequences and shot data creates a perception system that later allows facial recognition applications to read and interpret from the diagrams created by the image. In this way, those images available on the network can be appropriated and read to identify individuals protesting in public places. And in the local context, this may lead to their persecution, and even their imprisonment, by state agents.

Bill Viola (1982) argues that the digital representation is made up of information that creates a set of parameters, defining some terrain or field, where future calculations and binary events will occur. In the case of facial recognition, this schematic structuring of an image through the coding and interpretation process is interpreted by an algorithm that defines, based on the distance between data fields and translated into lights and shadows (0-1), a unique code that determines the appearance of a portrait. In this reading, carried out by the machine, the coherence of the result will depend, to a large extent, on the mitigation of the ‘occlusions’ or blockages that can disturb a clear view of the world around us. In other words, to perceive the world in this way, the algorithm must functionally simulate the complexity of, say, a human optical system through reduction and simplification (Amaro 2019); that is to say, by hiding the elements that allow the algorithm to carry out these calculations. And it is there, precisely, where the possibilities for subverting the apparatus arise, through what I have observed as three concealment strategies: the first, by the photographed object, the portrayed; the second, by the composition strategy of the photographer, who frames the pictures avoiding close-ups of faces; and the last, through retouching strategies that hide the identities of those who are portrayed.

 

Fig. 8. Photograph of masks worn by protesters. Photo: ‘Feminist Hoods in Resistance’ Aurora Briseño (2020) 8M demonstration march. Santiago. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Three Anti-surveillance Strategies

The first tactic consists of hiding the face using pieces of cloth (face coverings), masks, inverted t-shirts, or balaclavas. The government criminalised those who used these methods by passing a law to convict those who covered ‘their face intentionally with the purpose of hiding their identity’ (Senado 2020). Covering faces was the most efficient way to subvert the apparatus, because it ensured that protesters could not be portrayed in an identifiable way by any photographer, or by surveillance cameras arranged in the public space, and prevented photographs being used as a form of evidence to prosecute individuals. This way of resisting not only creates a way of being in public space, but also a series of codes and aesthetics associated with the use of the face coverings, which structure a way of solidarity, coherence, and constructing an identity from the community. It is important to note that during the beginning of the protests many people who worked in workshops that made face coverings were detained, making those denominated ‘primera línea’ (front-line activists), who were positioned as a sort of shield to guard the rest of the protesters from repressive forces, vulnerable to being identified if they did not wear a mask.

 

Fig. 8. Photograph of masks worn by protesters. Photo: ‘Feminist Hoods in Resistance’ Aurora Briseño (2020) 8M demonstration march. Santiago. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Thus, this tactic is configured as the most paradoxical of the three, since it was condemned with phrases such as ‘those who do nothing, fear nothing’ (Senado 2020), widely criticising the protest and at the same time criminalising it. Contrarily, today, the changes in perception regarding the use of face coverings has generated a radical alteration in the representation of the struggle. After the government issued a decree making the use of masks (face coverings) mandatory in Chile in order to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the face coverings, t-shirts, or masks were transformed into health masks. With this, an interesting tension arises from the initial prohibition of the use of face coverings and the later state-sanctioned use of masks, shifting away from the negative construction that arises in the context of mobilisation (the hooded), and now aligning with a duty towards protecting the health of the population and the need for re-signifying its images of masked faces, and to use them to save lives. Simultaneously, it is clear that the image of the protective mask has not yet managed to be appropriated from the individual that manifests itself in public space, but rather is presented as a ubiquitous image of a global fight against the uncertainty generated by the pandemic.

 

Fig. 9. Photograph from a distance hiding the faces and identity of those who are portrayed. Photo: ‘Re-evolution’ Susana Hidalgo (2019). Plaza de la Dignidad. Santiago. Courtesy of the artist.

 

The second strategy consists of taking distance from the object. The photographers, aware of their agency and the apparatus, decide not to photograph faces, avoiding close-up portraits in order to make a document that conveys the ambience of a specific time and place. Those who implement this type of strategy use a wide-angle lens and landscape views to hide the identity of those portrayed, while conveying the event through collective images and shadowed faces. These images are reminiscent of Romantic pictorial scenes such as the painting by Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830). An internal narrative is established in these images, from which the different faces, miniaturised, configure a scene and a sense of scale, and show us what it felt like to be there, depicting those in the streets as freedom fighters.

 

Fig. 10. Retouched photograph with mosaic to hide the identity of the protester. Photo: Javier Godoy (2019) Primera Línea. Santiago. Courtesy of the artist.

 

Finally, the third and last strategy used, which again focuses on the digital condition of the image, is the one made from the algorithm that, commanded by the photographer’s agency, hides the identity of the subject of the photograph, breaking apart the recognition diagram, and making it impossible for the facial recognition algorithm to identify them. One of the photographers I interviewed described his strategy in the following terms: ‘I personally very grossly manipulate the images, the faces, or any identifying signs such as tattoos and distinctive marks on clothing. In this way, these retouching processes of the image are crude and notorious, an intentionally visible sign’ (WhatsApp group conversation, 2020). In other words, through the tools available in image manipulation software, the signs that the algorithms read to recognise faces are erased and blocked. There is a concern to engage with an explicit manipulation of the resulting photograph. By doing so, the photograph does not lose the relationship that documentary photography has with documenting reality, or—in other words—as an indexical apparatus. The big problem with this strategy, regardless of whether or not it intends to account for what is real (and how problematic that could be), is that it assumes that a democratic state respects the right of photographers to protect their informants. However, according to the photographers whose perspectives informed these reflections, this has not been the case. In fact, some photographers have been forced to deliver their original material to the agencies in charge of investigating the alleged abuses, and their images have as a result aided the prosecution of alleged offenders.

 

Fig. 11. Detail of the retouched image. ‘Primera Línea’ (Front-line activist). Photo: Javier Godoy (2019) Primera Línea. Santiago. Courtesy of the artist.

 

While the success of the burgeoning biometric industry lies in its promise to measure the essence of identity rapidly, objectively and truthfully by analysing the surface of a human body, it often involves a mix of commercial, state, and military interests (Amaro 2019). We cannot forget that, in January 2020, the Chilean government tendered more than 16 billion Chilean pesos (Fundación Derechos Digitales 2020) for the implementation of a ‘teleprotection’ system, which includes facial recognition technology ‘in order to prevent crime, control incivilities, provide support in emergencies and contribute to criminal prosecution, among others’ (Mercado Público 2020). The image of the cities of Chile, especially those sectors that are ‘more vulnerable and with the highest rate of crimes of high social connotation’ (ibid.), will be transformed into a diagram of mathematical measurements, of colour fields and contrasts that will become a unique code, and which will ultimately configure a person. This is problematic not only as a scenario of greater surveillance, but also the fact that this visualisation of identities implies the reduction of human beings to an ideological and standardised scheme (Amaro 2019). This technology has also been widely questioned both for its false-positive rates and the violations it implies for underrepresented and vulnerable groups such as women, dark-skinned, or trans people (Fundación Derechos Digitales 2020). When implemented, it generates social dynamics that ‘erode the autonomy of people in favour of a system that seeks absolute control’ (ibid.). In this sense, the portrait generated not only by people but also by non-human machines indicates a new way of inhabiting space. It is a problem that goes beyond photographic practice, and touches upon the way identity is presented and represented in this new context of surveillance.

Conclusion

Each of the strategies employed by the photographers documenting the protests in Chile works upon an ecology of relations where the photographic practice is not understood as a frozen event, but as a sequence of decisions, agencies, and relations that configure its meaning. Therefore, a system for surveillance is ultimately comprised of the photographer, the photographed object (people, places or objects), the camera (lenses, sensors, cards, etc.), the algorithm of the photographic software, the algorithms of the social media network, and finally the facial recognition software and the state (police, government, etc.). Consequently, there is a need to rethink each of these nodes of relations, in order to subvert state power and develop new strategies for civil rebellion.

It is in this controlled environment (which has increased in the context of the pandemic) that these kinds of reflections become urgent, not only to understand the different appropriation strategies that occur organically in the streets in the midst of a state of exception—as happened in Chile—but to make us aware of what is at stake, and how each subversion strategy can pose a problem. In the case of photographic practice, facial recognition is established as a new paradigm, which configures the scene from a different assumption, which is the protection of those who are portrayed. It is no longer only a photograph and its ability to index reality to subvert official discourses and expose repression, but a document that can be used against those portrayed.

Therefore, the advance of digital surveillance represents an ethical problem, and creates the need for new protection strategies for those who are photographed. In this sense, the role of documentary photographers has changed, and their identity is shifting from that of whistle-blowers to a more complex position. In this process, the relationship of photography with reality, and its ability to archive it, comes into question. The images are transformed into narratives of subjective experiences almost in real-time, where protagonists know each other through multiple disguises. It is worth wondering if it is necessary to exaggerate the fictitiousness of the photographic apparatus, to separate this idea of ‘what was there’ from what is represented, or even if it is necessary to take distance from the practice of documenting reality, despite the relevance this has had in representing different histories of struggle. [3] To reflect and observe these changes are keystones into understanding photography, not as a colonial tool but as a potential technology 2for subverting the hierarchies and violence that the same photographic system has imposed. The three strategies reflected here are examples of photographic space-time appropriations, to move the frame, to evade the faces, or to transform them into something that the corporation regime cannot recognise, allows us, practitioners, to create new relations wherein we no longer focus on the resulting image, but the system and relations within which the photographs are immersed.

There is an urgent call for us, practitioners, to re-think and rewrite our narratives, thinking not only about the consequences, but also of the possibilities that our actions can bring, re-orientating our practices so that they can be transformed into a new set of strategies for resistance.

 

Notes: 

[1] A social dispute regarding the name of Plaza de la Dignidad it still ongoing. The square has had various names throughout history: Plaza La Serena (1875), Plaza Colón (1892), Plaza Italia (1910), Plaza Baquedano (1927), and is today officially named in Google Maps as Plaza de la Dignidad (Becerra 2019).

[2] Several cases of police violence against photographers were reported. Among them the case of the murder of photographer Albertina Martínez, the blinding of photographer Nicole Kramm, and other cases such as the targeting of a BBC team with teargas, and direct violence towards other practitioners, many of whom were also detained (McGowan & Bartlett 2019).

[3] The most recent example of this is the relevance of the video footage to the conviction in the George Floyd case.


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