Rephotography and the Era of Witness

Abstract

The unprecedented significance attributed to witness and testimony in diverse aspects of contemporary culture has shifted focus away from the idea of history as an objective account of past events, to personal narratives characterized by emotion and personal memory. By examining Gustavo Germano’s series of family rephotographs “Ausencias (Argentina)” (2006), this article addresses how the emphasis on witness in contemporary culture is reshaping our conceptions of photography and how photographs are used to relate to others and the past. Germano’s series uses rephotography as a tool to raise critical questions about photography, absence, testimony and history in the wake of the disappearance of tens of thousands of Argentinian citizens during that country’s military dictatorship (1976‒1983). As the series simultaneously critiques and revives myths of photographic truth and presence, it signals an important change in contemporary culture that gives notions of the photographic witness and photography’s links to history new meaning.