Arte-Art / Guatemala / Identity / Maya / Photography
“The human experience” guides Guatemalan photographer
Luis González Palma, the acclaimed Guatemalan photographer known for his hauntingly beautiful portraits, says he was not interested in photography at first, but only in how images represent the human experience.
“Vemos lo que somos porque nuestros rostros son una parte de lo sociocultural” (We see what we are because our faces are a part of our sociocultural experience),” González told a packed audience that filled an entire room Oct. 8 at the Art Museum of the Americas, where his photographs are currently on exhibition.
He is known for portraying the people of his Central American homeland, often posed in powerfully symbolic ways. The collections often have provocative titles such as the portrait series, Tu mirada me distorciona sin saberlo (Your face distorts me without knowing it).
The beautiful churches of his native country influence his work, he says, as well as Latin America’s. poetically styled art. The Magical Realism movement most often associated with Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez is also a major influence on his work, says González.
As for his photographic process, developing and changing the photos himself is more important to González than tweaking them via Photoshop, so he never works on a computer. He says he would rather work on physical prints of his photos than work on digital copies of them.
He concluded his discussion by describing how “the story of art is that time passes and we are going to die.” By taking photographs, González says he immortalizes parts of the past that the viewers can keep looking back on even as they grow older.
More information about Luis González Palma can be found on his website.
-Cathleen Alarcón
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