The Everyday as Counter-Archive: Spectral Visualities from Ayacucho

Abstract

This article explores the photographic archive of Hugo Ned Alarcón, a local journalist in Ayacucho, Peru, whose images document the contours of everyday life in the epicenter of the internal armed conflict. Through a critical reading of the photographs and the collaborative process behind their recovery, the article argues for understanding lo cotidiano (the everyday) as a form of counter-archive. Drawing on visual anthropology and memory studies, it challenges the dominance of emblematic images that often flatten experience into symbols. Instead, it proposes the counter-archive as a framework for memory grounded in intimacy, ambiguity, and resilience. The images offer not resolution but relation, demanding
a slower, more ethical engagement with the afterlives of violence.