Luz del Día: Copyrighting the Light of Day

“Luz del Día” is in direct reaction to Copyright Bill No. 2517-D-2015 that would extend Argentinian copyright to 70 years post-mortem or “after the death” of the photographer.

If passed, the bill could inhibit public access to a vast trove of photographs from the Argentine Dictatorship (1976-1983). Many photographers who documented the war were among the 30,000 “disappeared” by the country’s right-wing dictatorship and therefore do not have a legal death date. Should the bill be enacted, their photographs - currently in the public domain - taken during the dictatorship would be retroactively privatized by the state. Argentina has a poor record of making state-owned archives, regardless of their subject matter, accessible to the public.

In an attempt to keep these images publicly available, I have altered them in four ways: (1) reverting the scanned prints back to negatives, (2) layering the images, (3) negating the images and (4) cropping the images. By extensively manipulating the images, I can personally re-copyright these new artworks and donate them back into the public domain. If proposed Copyright Bill No. 2517-D-2015 is passed this newly-created archive will be the only publicly accessible photographic archive of the Argentine dictatorship. Image will be made accessible to the public via Wikipedia Commons and in publicly available books.

This project hopes to reflect on the politics of the archive and the failure of images to portray violence. If the images of the disappeared are effaced, then how will we ever learn from history?

(Learn more about this project here: www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/the-creative-dissent-of-stephanie-mercedes/Content?oid=3152249)