Abstract

In this article we analyse the covers of the newspaper El Mercurio de Valparaiso about the great fire in the city of April 12, 2014. The approach is interdisciplinary, articulating the history of previous tragedies and their coverage, the analysis of images, and the press. We observe the construction of a story that has historical antecedents and that implies a treatment of the news that leads to a process of decline and displacement. We propose that the images and the covers on them pose a representation of the catastrophe that can be synthesized in the metaphor of a "Theater of Images", and that allows it to be intelligible. We propose that it not only accounts for a modality of news treatment, rather, it is consistent with the logic that guides the liminal processes of any historical society.