Documenting the Documentation
As a photojournalist, Astrid Jahnsen visited the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Trujillo at the beginning of 2011. She walked attentively through its halls, offices, and storage rooms, carrying only her camera, until she discovered—almost by surprise—the Decentralized Archive (where legal documents from judicial cases are stored) and the storage area for confiscated goods (where objects related to those cases are kept).
Driven by both journalistic curiosity and a sharp photographic eye, Astrid focuses on these two spaces and explores them freely. She uses her trained gaze and makes full use of her camera to develop an investigation that is not brief or event-driven, as in traditional reporting, but rather extended, meticulous, and attentive to detail. In the Decentralized Archive, her work reveals the blurred boundaries—both formal and conceptual—between photographic genres, moving between documentary practice, photojournalism, and art.
Through wide-angle images and careful attention to detail, Jahnsen momentarily steps away from her role as a journalist and takes on that of a documentarian. In doing so, she shifts her focus from immediate events to what lies beneath them: personal histories, pain, and injustice. These stories belong to a particularly violent period in the country’s recent history, when urban growth—especially in the north—was marked by crime and instability within a weakened and often ineffective judicial system.
At the same time, a stronger commitment emerges: Astrid assumes the role of the artist. Here, aesthetic choices, social context, and cultural meaning come together to deepen the viewer’s engagement. The Decentralized Archive becomes a space where these elements intersect, and where photography’s core quality—its evidentiary power—comes into play.
The documents and confiscated objects found in the Public Prosecutor’s Office form an invisible infrastructure that reflects social reality. Jahnsen’s photographs examine and reveal this reality, making the invisible visible. In doing so, they not only document but also reinterpret these materials, transforming them into testimonies—into memory.
Carlos Caamaño
