Chas Gerretsen - Chile: the photo archive 1973-1974

A visual memory of Chile in the years of 1973 and 74. Photojournalist Chas Gerretsen takes us to Chile under President Salvador Allende. The book documents what happened on the streets of Santiago from January 1973 till September 1974: women demonstrations, miner strike and student riots, standing in line for hours for the necessities of life. Chas photographed daily live, leading up to the coup d’état on September 11, 1973 and the immediate aftermath: bodies in the streets, funerals, concentration camps – life in a dictatorship. Many of the images were never published before, till Gerretsen started posting them on social media in 2020. The result was a great demand from the Chilean people to see more of the images Chas had taken in their country and a plead for a book creating a permanent memory of President Allende’s last year in office, of the coup and the resulting dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. The photograph of Pinochet with the dark glasses was taken seven days after the coup d’état. The picture became an icon for the left, depicting the ultimate dictator and was used in protest marches against oppressive governments all over the world. Gerretsen created a book of these tumultuous years, as a visual memory for future generations and those who experienced this difficult time.