At the 30th Anniversary Edition of Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, supported by the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester, running from 16–18 June 2025, AA History and Critical Thinking (HCT) Alum Richard Gerald-Rondón will present The Photographic Image of Disaster, a paper that began as an essay developed during his HCT MA at the AA in London in 2022.

The paper analyses how photographs mediate between violence, memory and ideology. It explores how photographic reproduction creates an aesthetic of disruption, translating moments of unrest into visual signs laden with political abstraction and historical anxiety. Far from neutral, these images participate in broader struggles over space, power and representation, serving both state containment and insurgent strategy. In its final section, the paper moves from analogue media to contemporary forms of surveillance and automated image capture, tracing the evolving power of photography as a tool of social control. It argues that the hyper mediatisation of protest demands renewed tactics of resistance and concludes by calling for a politics of opacity: a rethinking of visibility through practices that defy algorithmic vision.

Image: Sady González, photograph taken on 9 April 1948 during the Bogotazo riots, depicting a car set on fire in downtown Bogotá. Archivo de Bogotá, Topographic Reference: AB.04.35.264 / Folder 399, Item 264.