National Stadium, Santiago, Chile, 1973
During the Chilean coup d’état, prisoners were brought to the National Stadium for processing and interrogation. Burnett went back to visit the stadium last year with some of the former prisoners. “Everybody said, ‘it’s amazing they didn’t kill you,’” he says now of his presence there in 1973. “I didn’t even think about it. … You do have to have a pretty good sense of what your own capabilities are and how to operate. The world has gotten a whole lot more dangerous in the last 10 or 15 years, for sure. There used to be a little bit of protection with a camera, not much, but a little bit. Now you’re just increasingly a target as much as anything, and that’s terrible.”
Detention of suspected leftists during sept. 11th Coup, Led by Gen. Pinochet, at the National Stadium, Military Coup, Santiago, Chile, September 1973..© David BURNETT (CONTACT PRESS IMAGES)