La imagen cautiva. Reflexiones sobre la foto icónica de Íngrid Betancourt durante el secuestro

Abstract

The text proposes the reading of a shared and recognizable image as an iconic photograph, namely as a part of the collective visual memory: a still that shows the ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt during her kidnaping. The anonymous authorship of the photograph, its circulation in the press, its character as a document and its symbolization in the public debate do not impede us from analyzing it as well for its aesthetic or aesthetic-political characteristics. On the contrary, we will see how any photograph can help us understand the links between form and discourse. We will analyze its value as photographic proof of life, its consonance with the long history of images and their capacity to raise awareness, in a literal sense to put in images and to make visible nameless places of the geographic and political Colombian landscape from the first decade of the millennium.