DRIFTING AWAY
Erika Diettes
Essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker
George F. Thompson Publishing
Fall 2013

A poignant memorial to the victims of Colombia’s ongoing, armed conflict, the images in DRIFTING AWAY are at once beautiful and deeply moving. Amplified by images of the photographs being shown in memorials in areas where the victims were “disappeared,” as well as by essays exploring the social and political implications of the work, this book will be a significant resource in contemporary Latin American studies, as well as for social anthropologists, human rights workers, and those wanting to understand at a very basic level the human cost of terrorism. The exhibition of the work in DRIFTING AWAY was the most viewed show in the history of the Nacional Museo de Colombia.  The work has also been shown in the U.S. at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and other venues.

Erika Diettes is a Colombian photographer and social anthropologist whose work is subtle, yet gut-wrenching, and focuses on the deeply personal yet universal effects of political violence and injustice.  Her first book, Silencios, was on survivors of the Holocaust now living in Colombia. It was published by Consuelo Mendoza Ediciones in 2005, and is available in the U.S. through photo-eye and the Jewish Museum.