Luis González Palma

Dark yellow-brown tones cover the surface of this print, producing a shadowy haze punctured only by the bright white of the figure’s eyes. This tonal quality is the result of a thin wash of bitumen, or asphalt, a smelly, sticky material most commonly used for paving roads. Coupled with the velvety richness of the photogravure process, González Palma’s use of bitumen pays homage to the materials and techniques of early photographic history. See, in particular, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s heliogravure of Cardinal D’Amboise, which was printed from a metal plate coated in light-sensitive bitumen, in the smaller gallery at left. 

In his photographs of the Maya people of Guatemala, Luis González Palma uses symbolic iconography to shed light on this group’s social, political, and personal plights. Recasting the Virgin Mary as a veiled Maya woman, Palma imbues El Silencio with all of the connotations of the life of the Virgin as he brings a figure traditionally depicted as a woman of European descent into a Latin American context. The title of the work perhaps refers to the suffering, discrimination, and genocide the Maya often silently have endured for centuries.