Limbo
Over the past sixty years, more than 136,000 people have been forcibly disappeared in Colombia. Today, more than 14,000 forensic search sites are scattered across the country—places where missing persons may lie buried in anonymity*. The disappeared and their loved ones have been condemned to inhabit a gray zone, a limbo between life and death.
As Anne Huffschmid reminds us, neither alive nor dead, the disappeared belong to a phantasmagorical category, occupying a non-place—a limbo. Disappearance also extends into the spatial dimension: the disappeared are both nowhere and everywhere at once. Their remains are dispersed across Colombia’s vast geography and dwell within the limbo of our inability to imagine them. Forced disappearance robs families of the most basic human act: mourning. Relatives—immersed in unresolved, suspended grief—often say that not even a bone remains to say goodbye, and that every day is consumed by the ambiguous loss of their loved ones and the pressing question of whether they are alive or dead, hungry, cold. As one father put it: “I have thought, on 1,107 nights, about 1,107 different ways in which my son could have died.” This uncertainty is not collateral damage; it is the crime itself.
The fate of the disappeared remains in the hands of those who decided it—state actors, paramilitaries, guerrillas, and others seeking control. In Colombia, forced disappearance has been more widespread—and tragically, more enduring—than in the dictatorships of Chile or Argentina. It is the hidden outcome of a drawn-out, low-intensity war linked to counterinsurgency policies, territorial control, illicit economies, and megaprojects in hydrocarbons, tourism, and agribusiness. Sustained by impunity, it leaves behind no bodies, no evidence, and no perpetrators. It is an invisible, silent, perfect crime.
For years, I have travelled across Colombia, through towns and territories turned into mass graves and clandestine burial sites. I have photographed families who, after decades of searching, are still waiting for answers. I have joined protest marches and commemorations—yearly reminders that Alice, Gerardo, Roberto Antonio, and so many others, never came home. I have also documented forensic work and the Plan Cementerio program, through which Colombian authorities exhume and identify thousands of people buried anonymously in cemeteries. Many of these places contain victims of extrajudicial killings who were thrown into common pits without records—so they would never be found, and those responsible could never be held accountable.
By revealing the geographic scale, systematic nature, and profound impact of this crime, Limbo confronts the memoricide carried out by Colombian authorities, who for decades have sought to downplay or erase its very existence. This approach echoes Georges Didi-Huberman’s reflection in Images in Spite of All: that images must be seen for what they truly are, even in a world already saturated—almost suffocated— by the endless circulation of images. It is through images that the unimaginable becomes graspable, that absence is given a face, and that we are able to recognize what might otherwise remain invisible. The project honors the disappeared and their families, who have spent decades searching for their loved ones and fighting to restore their good name. Even today, many Colombians continue to believe that if someone has been disappeared, there must be a reason—an assumption that only deepens the injustice.
Limbo captures the frustration of trying to assemble an impossible puzzle. It is a visual tribute to absence, and a sustained act of bearing witness.
*According to data from June 2026 from the Search Unit for Persons Reported Missing (UBPD).
**In 2022, the project won an Honorable Mention in the long-term project category at the World Press Photo. In 2024, it was finalist at The Aftermath Project, won the Women Photograph Grant and the Italian Council 13.