Limbo
Over the past sixty years, nearly 133,000 people have been forcibly disappeared in Colombia. Today, more than 11,000 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. Being neither alive nor dead, the disappeared belong to a phantasmagorical category, occupying a non-place—a limbo. Disappearance also extends to the spatial dimension, with the disappeared being both nowhere and everywhere at once. Their remains are scattered 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 an 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 their beloved is alive or dead, hungry or 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.”
The fate of the disappeared lies in the hands of those who decided their end—State actors, paramilitaries, guerrillas, and others seeking control. In Colombia, forced disappearance has been more widespread—and tragically, more current—than in Chile or Argentina’s dictatorships. It is the hidden outcome of a drawn-out, low-intensity war tied to territorial control, illicit economies, and megaprojects in hydrocarbons, tourism, and agribusiness. Sustained by impunity, it leaves behind no bodies, no evidence, and no culprits, becoming an invisible, “perfect” crime.
For years, I have traveled across Colombia, through towns and landscapes turned into mass graves, cemeteries, and clandestine burial sites. I have photographed families who, after decades of searching, still wait for answers. I have joined protest marches and commemorations—yearly reminders that Alice, Gerardo, or Roberto Antonio have not come home. I have also documented forensic work and the Plan Cementerio program, in which Colombian authorities exhume and identify thousands buried anonymously in public cemeteries. Many of these graves hold victims of extrajudicial killings who were, for decades, thrown into common pits without record—so they could never be found, and those responsible could never be judged.
By exposing 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. The situation echoes Georges Didi-Huberman’s reflection in
Images in Spite of All: that images must be seen as they truly are, even in a world already saturated—almost suffocated—with imaginary merchandise. 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 not only searching for their loved ones but also fighting to reclaim their dignity. Even today, most Colombians continue to believe that if someone has been disappeared, there must be a reason—an assumption that deepens the injustice.
Limbo captures the frustration of piecing together a puzzle to form the impossible: a visual tribute to absence.
*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 project.