It is only through the acknowledgement of a multitude of truths and perceptions that the myths that war perpetuates, and from which it has stemmed, can be deconstructed. This deconstruction is...Show moreIt is only through the acknowledgement of a multitude of truths and perceptions that the myths that war perpetuates, and from which it has stemmed, can be deconstructed. This deconstruction is essential to reach the goals of transitional justice (TJ), the peace-building effort implemented by a state that has suffered human rights abuses owing to authoritarianism and war during its transition to democracy or after the signing of a Peace Agreement. Photographs that captured the times preceding such transition, might offer a testimony to the violence from which the state seeks to heal through TJ’s mechanisms. These mechanisms are aimed at repairing the profound damages that the country has suffered at legal, political, economic and societal levels (Díaz, 2018, 3-5). These images might offer fragments of evidence that could be adopted to hold perpetrators accountable and facilitate the construction of collective memory of the past. This thesis argues that when photography offers a representation of the conflict capturing its complexity and nuances, it might foment the understanding of its seeds and the nurturing of socio-political narratives to promote its non-recurrence. In this way, photography might contribute to TJ’s peacebuilding goal. By 2018, over 8 million people had officially been registered as victims of the Colombian conflict, which started in 1964 and is Latin America's longest war. Despite the signing of a Peace Agreement with the FARC in 2016 and the ambition to build peace in Colombia, this number is increasing through new waves of violence (Navarro, 2019, 290). Considering the country’s historical and contemporary context, this thesis aims to explore how Colombia's war photographers reflected and contributed to its transitional justice efforts. It will focus on the significant photographic works of Jesús Abad Colorado, Federico Ríos, and Stephen Ferry, produced between the 1990s and the post-2016 period. This research is inspired by two beliefs. First, considering Colombia’s forthcoming presidential elections and its candidates’ need for fomenting an effective peace process to end its violence, it is contemporarily relevant to understand the Colombian conflict (Sardiña, 2022). Second, war photography is not a mere objective reflection of conflict, but it is rather a mirror of the perceptions of image-makers on it. Consequently, their subjectivity is worth being researched as it crucially affects how conflicts are represented, remembered, and perhaps even resolved. 4 Chapter 1 reviews literature debating the connection between TJ, photography, conflict, and peace. Chapter 2 contextualises the Colombian conflict from the 1990s and the 2016 Peace Agreement (2.1 and 2.2), introduces the photographers that have documented it (2.3) and presents the qualitative methodology, i.e iconological analysis and interviews, used to analyse their works (2.4). The images used derive from the exhibition “El Testigo” (2020) by Jesús Abad Colorado, the book "Verde" (2021) by Federico Ríos and the book and exhibition "Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict" by Stephen Ferry (2012). Chapter 3 analyzes the images of the photographers, which are organized around the themes of violence (3.1), conflict's complexity (3.2) and armed actors (3.3). The conclusion of the thesis reflects on photography's potential as a tool for TJ.Show less
