72 Days in the Andes: Flight 571 in Photographs

Men sit in the snow beside Flight 571's damaged fuselage. Torn panels, exposed seating and the open cabin show how little separated their shelter from the mountains around it. Several men smile for the camera, although a photograph cannot record the freezing nights, injuries and hunger that continued beyond the frame.

The survivors used the aircraft's remains, luggage and seat materials to protect themselves. This small color image preserves a moment of company inside a struggle that lasted more than two months. The Commons record dates it to December 9, 1972; that precise exposure date has not been independently established.

A bearded man in a thick sweater stands between other men, one of whom holds his arm. The Commons source identifies the central figure as Roberto Canessa. The printed dots and paper texture belong to a newspaper reproduction, rather than a modern restoration.

Canessa and Nando Parrado had crossed the mountains to find help. Their encounter with Sergio Catalán enabled the rescue of the men still at the wreckage on December 22 and 23. This photograph was published in Thailand's Daily News on December 26, 1972, according to its source record. That publication date is not evidence that the camera exposure occurred on the same day.

A rounded aircraft window frame lies among twisted metal, torn panels and scattered wreckage against a snowy mountain slope. The Wikimedia Commons record identifies these as surviving fragments of Flight 571 and dates this photograph to March 10, 2018.

These are later remains at the accident site, rather than a photograph of the shelter as it stood in 1972. Placed after the survivors' return, the image brings the story back to its physical setting: an aircraft broken apart in a remote landscape, with material traces still visible decades later.

A cross rises above aircraft fragments and stones in a snow-filled mountain basin. The source describes this view as the crash memorial in February 2006, looking west toward the mountain crossed by Parrado and Canessa in their effort to reach help.

The gallery closes here because the story belongs to all 45 people aboard the flight. Sixteen returned; 29 did not. The memorial brings those losses into the same landscape that made the survivors' rescue so difficult. This is a later record of remembrance, taken more than three decades after the accident.