Torture Collection

Paula Luttringer, photographer.

“I went down about twenty or thirty steps and I heard big iron doors being shut. I imagined that the place was underground, that it was big, because you could hear people’s voices echoing and the airplanes taxiing overhead or nearby. The noise drove you mad. One of the men said to me: so you’re a psychologist? Well, bitch, like all the psychologists, here you’re really going to find out what’s good. And he began to punch me in the stomach. MARTA CANDELORO WAS ABDUCTED ON JUNE 7, 1977 IN NEUQUEN. SHE WAS THEN TAKEN TO THE DETENTION CENTER, ‘LA CUEVA’.” From the series, El Lamento de los Muros, 2000-2005. Digital print on fine arts paper.

I've just finished editing the proofs on the torture collection (thus, the low level of posting recently). It's first being published as a special issue of the very fine journal, South Central Review. It'll soon afterwards come out as a book. The journal will be out by March, I believe, while the book will be somewhere around late spring or early summer.

Reading through it again I've realized just how good it is. Each author did something terrific, thoughtful, difficult. And the cover photo is by the great Argentinean photographer, Paula Luttringer, who was herself "disappeared" during Argentina's dirty war. She kindly allowed me to borrow it for the collection.

I'll be shamelessly promoting it once the collection appears in print, but for now here's the lineup of contributors and Paula's cover photo.

Stephanie Athey
Christopher Britt Arredondo
Pilar Calveiro
Carlos Castresana
Ariel Dorfman
Barbara Ehrenreich
Michael Hatfield
Thomas C. Hilde
Alphonso Lingis
Adi Ophir
Darius Rejali
Margarita Serje
Eduardo Subirats
Tzvetan Todorov
Rebecca Wittmann