Chile 1970s: Through the Lenses of Depardon and Burnett

“Septembre au Chili 1971/1973”, Raymond Depardon – David Burnett (2023), © Atelier EXB.

Two major photographers. Two months of September at the opposite. This book recounts the events that have shaped Chilean history. These events are seen through the lenses of two leading figures in photojournalism. In September 1971, Raymond Depardon set off for Santiago. He wanted to capture the effervescence that followed the election of socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970. He continued his journey in the south of the country. Two years later, in September 1973, David Burnett arrived in the Chilean capital shortly after the coup d’état. He photographed the moments of tension and terror that followed. This immersion in the Chile of the 1970s questions what the country has become today, fifty years after the events.

We discovered the reproduction of the iconic photograph by Leopoldo Víctor Vargas. It lies at the heart of these two photographic corpora composing the book. The book features a reproduction of the iconic photograph by Leopoldo Vargas. It captures the last image of Salvador Allende alive, inside La Moneda, the presidential palace, weapon in hand. Several texts by Robert Pledge and Luis Poirot punctuate and contextualize this double visual corpus. They are supplemented by two personal accounts of the time. The first is that of Sonja Martinson Uppman, former secretary at the Swedish embassy in Chile in 1973. The second account is that of Alejandra Matus. She was a little girl at the time of the coup, and her youth was marked by the dictatorship. © Atelier EXB 2023

Source: https://exb.fr/en/home/599-septembre-au-chili-19711973.html © Atelier EXB 2023.