"Lifting the Lid": Documentary Photography and Testimony in Paz Errázuriz and Claudia Donoso's "Adam's Apple".

This paper presents a critical discussion of the Chilean photobook La manzana de Adán/Adam's Apple, a collaborative work between the photographer Paz Errázuriz and the writer Claudia Donoso. The photobook was conceived during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–90). Through photography and text, Adam's Apple traces the everyday lives of cross-dressing and transgender sex workers living in Santiago de Chile's and Talca's brothels. This essay attempts to establish the mechanisms that allow Adam's Apple to function as an effective political critique and a constructive element for postdictatorial Chile's relationship to history and memory. Central to my argument is an understanding of Adam's Apple's aesthetics as neo-baroque—within a Latin American context, this is a militant visual language that assumes a critical stance against political and cultural repression. I discuss the rapport between text and photography as both complementary and crucial to expressing the book's message. Finally, I propose an understanding of the book as a Foucauldian heterotopia that positions the queer body as upsetting to the Chilean state of exception. The article concludes with a brief reception history, which places a final emphasis on Adam's Apple as an object that functions within and for the preservation of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]