Presentation
This report presents the testimony of ten persons who suffered grave eye injuries during the various social protests that have taken place in Chile since 18 October 2019. In all the cases documented, the injuries were caused by anti-riot bullets or tear gas used by the police.
The number of victims exceeds 400, and according to the Chilean Medical Association and human rights groups, it outnumbers injuries suffered in the protests in Hong Kong in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The aim behind Luis Sergio’s work is to bring the current situation to light and share experiences in places that are off the beaten track for most people. A more subjective glance is taken, a narrative that unfolds in the pictures, treated as stories. The photographs in the Eyes series were taken in the same hospitals where victims received care. A black backdrop is used in all of the images to symbolise the mourning that the country was experiencing at the time.
Biography
A Peruvian-Chilean photographer, Luis Sergio was born in Lima in 1977 and resides in Santiago de Chile. He has worked as a correspondent for various newspapers: Peru’s La República, Argentina’s La Nación, and Chile’s La Tercera. In 2002, he began to participate in group and individual expositions and his works have been exhibited in Peru, Argentina, Chile, the United Kingdom and Spain.
In 2018 he published his firs book, Pu Mapuche, assembling a work that had been exhibited by the Santiago de Chile Fine Arts Museum, where Sergio reflect on the contemporary culture of the Mapuches – a First Nation of Southern Chile– presenting them from the intimacy of their homes and their everyday lives. Pu Mapuche was also included in the Latinoamérica es un Pueblo al sur de Estados Unidos (Latin America is a People South of the United States) collection at the PhotoEspaña Festival (PHE15). Luis Sergio is currently represented by Galería XS in Chile and by the Carlos Caamaño Proyecto Fotográfico in Perú.
