"Buenos Aires 2001: a culture under siege"

This project is based on memories of my place of birth, Argentina. Fifteen years ago, during the brutal economic crash of 2001-02, we saw the total breakdown of our society. There was no choice but to leave and move from one country to the next. I never returned. Now based in the UK, I’ve gone back over my archive of old negatives from those crisis years in Argentina, images bearing witness to the climate of desperation and commitment that shaped my vision as a photographer. Photographic practice is a way for me to construct a new reality from a vantage point of political awareness and resistance: my aim is to find a visual narrative by which to think critically about violence and its consequences for a culture. This series of photos taken on my daily wanderings around the city of Buenos Aires represents an emotional response to the chaotic moment I left the country and to the sinister invisibility of power. Political context As a Porteña, a child of the port city of Buenos Aires, I grew up hearing stories of dictatorship and countless desaparecidos — the “disappeared ones” killed in secret by military death squads and invisible higher circles of power. South America has a very complex history of exploitation and dependence on richer countries in Europe and the USA. Argentina in particular continues to suffer severe cuts in public welfare and extreme unemployment due to illegitimate debts incurred by the former regime to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Persecution, torture and disappearance — terror waged on ordinary citizens by political bosses — is an on-going reality.