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Restituciones
Art

Restitutions. Photography in Debt with its Past

Photography has ceased to be merely the capturing of images. The new uses of photography have turned it into a civil contract that brings together the photographed, the photographer and the apparatus. This encounter gives rise to new rights to which photography must respond. Suddenly, restitution, reparation, repatriation and renaming are part of photography’s new functions, as it faces a debt to its past and to itself. There is no doubt that this is the era of great restitution with respect to colonial heritage. But it is also true that there is little consensus on how to implement this massive reparation. Restitutions proffers ten case studies in which the expropriated or abused victim is not reduced to the human condition, but which also contemplate victims that we might call something more than human.