PROFILE
LUIS GONZÁLEZ PALMA
Mestizo Photographer
Luis González Palma
By Rosa Cays
T
HE VERY FIRST
PHOTOGRAPH I saw by
Luis González Palma was a
reproduction of Joven Alado, a
striking sepia portrait of a young boy
with bird’s wings as earmuffs, his body
wrapped in a wrinkled, shiny, black
cape up to his chin. His eyes stared
directly back at me from my friend’s
kitchen table where he was representing
his creator for an upcoming exhibit. I
picked up the postcard and took a closer
look. I noticed straightaway that only
the whites of the boy’s eyes were not the
reddish-brown tint of the sepia image.
It worked. It got my attention and made
me want to hold the young boy’s gaze.
Something about the photo felt
very familiar to me. Perhaps it was
simply that this boy looked like he
could be my son, but it was something
more, something deeper. I stared back
at him. It was as if the winged boy was
daring me to embrace and learn more
about my own Latin American lineage.
Indigenous Inspiration
To appreciate the photographic portraits
of Luis González Palma, one need only
have an inkling of respect for humanity.
This is what he captures in his intimate,
close-up portraits of individuals, many
of Maya and mestizo heritage. The
term mestizo means mixed in Spanish
and is generally used throughout Latin
America to describe people of white
European and Indigenous heritage.1
During the colonial period, the
Spanish developed a complex system of
racial hierarchy used for social control
communities’ customs. Despite local
differences and more than 30 living
languages, they share a culture and
history of an accomplished society.
The Maya legacy is profound. The
peak of their civilization was during
the Late Classic Period (250 CE to
900 CE), when their civic and artistic
endeavors included distinctive writing
and calendric systems, corbeled vault
construction, polychrome ceramics,
and public architecture that included
palaces, pyramids, and ball courts.6 The
cyclical nature of life was at the core of
Maya belief, with no notion of birth or
death, which influenced their interpretation of the gods and the cosmos and
inspired their efforts in mathematics,
astronomy, and architecture.7
Luis González Palma. All images in this article
courtesy of Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona.
to determine a person’s standing in
society.2 Numerous terms—mestizo,
pardo, mulato, and zambo—were created
to distinguish these racial mixtures,
called castas.3
Like so many Indigenous
civilizations, these people have had
more than their share of historic
suppression. The beauty and reverence
in González Palma’s obra (work) sheds
light on the Native people of his
homeland, Guatemala.
Close to eight million Maya
people live in Southern Mesoamerica
today.4 In Guatemala, more than 40
percent of the population are of Maya
heritage.5 While many are socially
active in contemporary ways of the
21st century, many maintain their
Growing Up in Guatemala
Luis González Palma was born in
Guatemala in 1957, the birthplace of
his parents. His father was of Spanish
heritage, bestowing mestizo origins
to his son. As Luis approached adolescence and adulthood in the 1970s and
early 1980s, Guatemala saw the worst
violence of the civil war, in particular
the Guatemalan army operations known
as Plan Victory 82, Plan Firmness 83,
and Plan Operation Sofía. The army’s
goal was to do whatever it took to
eliminate insurgency. In three years,
the army destroyed 626 villages, killed
or “disappeared” more than 200,000
people, displaced about 1.5 million, and
forced 150,000 others to seek refuge
in Mexico. During those years, artistic
production dwindled down to a few
1. Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “ ‘Mestizo’ and ‘mulatto’: Mixed-race identities among U.S. Hispanics,” Pew Research Center, July 10, 2015, web.
2. Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1967), 53–54.
3. Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds, The Course of Mexican History, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 195–196.
4. “Maya Today,” MesoAmerican Research Center, web.
5. An additional 0.2 percent of the population is non-Maya Indigenous, and 59.4 percent is mestizo. “Guatemala: People and Society,” CIA World Factbook, web.
6. “Classic Period,” MesoAmerican Research Center, web.
7. Joshua J. Mark, “Maya Civilization,” Ancient History Encyclopedia, July 6, 2012, web.
6 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM
Virginal, 1993–2011, hand-painted photograph on Hahnemühle watercolor paper, 41¾ × 41¾ in., edition of 5.
social salons and solitary experiments by
artists in their studios.8
At a young age, González Palma
was mesmerized by the sacred images
in Baroque paintings and sculptures in
the Catholic churches of Guatemala.
The emotional intensity captured in
these creations are what he strives to
capture in his own portraits.9 He studied
architecture and cinematography
at Universidad de San Carlos de
Guatemala and graduated in 1985.
He soon turned to photography after
shooting staged portraits of dancers
and actors with someone else’s
camera.10 “I was always drawn to art—
to painting and drawing. Photography
was a technique that at a certain point
gave me a sense of direction,” says
González Palma.11
His interest in art, painting, and
photography led him to train harder in
these fields and to connect with other
Guatemalan artists. In 1987, he and
painter/printmaker Moisés Barrios
embraced the country’s dissident
voices of art and opened la Galería
Imaginaria in the city of Antigua,
Guatemala. César Barrios, Daniel
Chauche, Sofía González, Erwin
8. Emiliano Valdés, “Collectivity and Revolution,” Guggenheim Blogs, October 22, 2014, web.
9. Amit Singh, “The sepia spectacle of life,” Fotoflock by Epson, October 28, 2015, web.
10. “Luis González Palma: NO TITLE,” Noorderlicht, 2002, web.
11. All quotes in this article, unless otherwise noted, are from the author’s email interview with Luis González Palma, December 2015.
S P R IN G 2 0 1 6
| 61
PROFILE
Guillermo, Pablo Swezey, and Isabel
Ruiz were among the artists at the
gallery, along with curator Rosina
Cazali. Today, this group of artists is
credited with formal experimentation
and the introduction of curatorship as
a formal practice in Guatemala.12
By the late 1980s, the self-taught
artist was well on his way to becoming
one of Latin America’s most important
postmodern photographers. González
Palma’s first solo exhibition,
Autoconfesión, was in 1989 at the
Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art
in New York. Other solo exhibitions
from 1990 to 2000 took his artwork to
cities and countries across the world:
Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Chicago,
Texas, Spain, Belgium, Scotland,
Canada, Poland, Ecuador, Colombia,
Cuba, and Brazil, to name a few.
In the late 1990s, González Palma
was part of Colloquia, an initiative
aimed at discussion, promotion, and
dissemination of contemporary art in
Guatemala. After several stays in Europe
and a final return to Guatemala in 1998,
he moved to Córdoba, Argentina,
in 2001. This is where he works and
lives now with Graciela De Oliveira,
a multitalented artist and scholar, and
their teenaged sons, Julian, Sebastian,
and Alitzeel Anahi.
Less than a decade after becoming
a photographer, Luis González Palma
had received attention and accolades
fit for a renowned artist. By 1996,
he had solo exhibitions at significant
institutions such as Mai de la Photo
in Arles, France; Scotland’s FotoFeis
International Festival of Photography;
and Fotofest in Houston, Texas. He
was one of a few young photographers
included in the critically acclaimed,
illustrated, historical survey of Latin
American photography, Canto a la
realidad: fotografía latinoamericana,
1860–1993, organized and published by
the Casa de America in Madrid, Spain.
LUIS GONZÁLEZ PALMA
Unique work from the Möbius series, 2014, hand-painted photograph printed on canvas, 20 × 20 in.
Unique work from the Möbius series, hand-painted photograph printed on canvas, 20 × 20 in.
El Arte de González Palma
González Palma often has
family members and friends sit for
him, people with whom he has an
emotional connection and who can
work with him in the collaborative
process. He makes his subjects equal to
the viewer, simultaneously revealing
their strength and vulnerability
through their steady countenance. His
hope is for “the observer to discover
himself in this internal, silent glance
… to become aware that we all share a
common destiny.”15
His use of symbols is romantic
and regal rather than confrontational.
“Of course my work is political,” says
González Palma, “but more in the
sense to question and reflect on ideas
and concepts related to hierarchies of
observation, preconceptions of how
we perceive others, and memories of
personal and social relationships.”
In more recent works, the artist
has folded, torn, sewn, taped, collaged,
and otherwise manipulated his images.
Luis González Palma paints asphaltum
on his photographs to achieve the
rich, sepia quality for which he has
become known. For him, the color
itself is symbolic and “has connotations related to the passing of life
in an eternal time.”13 He learned
about aging his images in this way
from friends in Mexico who used the
material to age furniture. Little did
González Palma know at the time that
asphaltum, a brownish solution of oil
or turpentine mixed with asphalt, was
the emulsion used on the first photograph 150 years before.14
Once the photograph is painted
over, González Palma carefully removes
the asphaltum from the whites of the
eyes and sometimes other highlights
in the image, like roses, feathers, or
crowns. He incorporates props and
costumes as symbolic gestures, also
12. Emiliano Valdés, “Collectivity and Revolution,” Guggenheim Blogs, October 22, 2014, web.
13. Amit Singh, “The sepia spectacle of life,” Fotoflock by Epson, October 28, 2015, web.
14. K. Mitchell Snow, “La inquietante mirada de Guatemala,” Américas 48, no. 3 (May–June 1996), via OPACudea.
6 2 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM
important in his artwork. It is this
treatment of his images and the intensification of his subject’s gaze that has
become González Palma’s signature
style in his portraiture. He captures the
essence of what it is to be human:
I am very interested in a face charged
with true human power, with a fierce
intensity in the eyes that at the same
time reflects human fragility/dignity,
beauty/pain, and tenderness/strength …
portraits where the viewer can recognize
him/herself at some point, regardless of
race or nationality.
He still works with a film camera
and in the past has printed on watercolor paper or other unusual materials,
even stone. He also uses gelatin
silver processing on Kodalith prints,
occasionally adding gold leaf and resin
to achieve the essence of passing time,
harking back to his childhood influences of religious paintings in the local
churches.
In one series from 2004 called La Luz
de la Mente (The Light of the Mind), he
painstakingly re-created the perizoma,
or loincloth, of Jesus Christ depicted
in classical paintings by Velázquez,
Rubens, El Greco, and others. Each
photograph, some in sepia, some
in silver gelatin, is numbered. The
perizoma is suspended on strings that
González Palma does not bother to
hide, with drips of resin (conceivably
symbolizing the blood of Christ) in
some of the images. Perhaps my own
Catholic upbringing came into play,
because I recognized the subject right
away, immediately intrigued and
saddened by the images. What impelled
him to create these photographs?
I wanted to explore the mantle of
modesty in the most important European
paintings of the crucifixion and make
connections with the sacred experience
and emptiness. There is never an
objective, really. You make what you
make for some mysterious reason.
The artist has also collaborated
with his partner and wife Graciela De
Oliveira on several projects, including
Jerarquías de Intimidad (Hierarchies of
Intimacy, 2002–2008), a study of
the complexity of relationships and
intimacy: el encuentro, el duelo, la
anunciación, la separación (the encounter,
the duel, the annunciation, and the
separation). González Palma creates
fictional and metaphorical scenarios
that explore “beauty as a political
power; religious experience loaded
with love and pain … in which healthy
bonds are scarce, given the complexity
of emotions.”16 De Oliveira’s powerful
titles deepen their meaning.
The 2009 Tu/Mi Placer (Your/
My Pleasure) was another collaboration
between De Oliveira and González
Palma, who look again at the workings
of intimacy and the veiled cruelty of
the past that surfaces at each stage of a
relationship. The striking images are
wrought with loneliness and beauty,
symbolically conveying the complexities of love.
In his latest series Möbius, he
has repurposed earlier portraits and
painted geometric shapes over them,
a reference to the early 20th-century
Latin American Concretism, an art
movement focused on abstraction
(versus figuration).
“My intention,” says González
Palma, “is to reconcile two principle
forms of representation in Latin
America in the 20th century, figurative
work and geometric abstraction …
to use my photos from the 1990s and
alter them with acrylic paint with clear
references to the geometric abstraction
movement.”
Asked what other influences have
shaped his work, González Palma cites
countless artists, including painter
Francis Bacon, whose work I consider
to be disquieting and rather the opposite
of his. I had to ask Luis what it was
about Bacon’s work that impressed him:
I love everything about Bacon’s work.
For me, he is one of the major creators
15. “Declaración de Artista,” Luis González Palma, web.
16. Ibid.
S P R IN G 2 0 1 6
| 63
PROFILE
LUIS GONZÁLEZ PALMA
La Sombras de Su Niñez (The Shadows of his Youth) from the series Jerarquías de Intimidad, La Separación (Hierarchies of Intimacy, the Separation), 2004,
mixed media collage diptych with Kodalith film, gold leaf and red paper embedded in resin, each panel is 34 × 34 in, edition of 10.
in the history of Western art. He came
to terms with the abyss to face his own
demons and hell of existence. At the same
time, he generated dialogues between the
abstract and the figurative and played
with unprecedented forms of portraiture.
Critics have described much of
González Palma’s work as nostalgic,
haunting, mysterious, hypnotic, surreal.
He once said that sadness is more
profound than happiness in the human
condition—and what seems to emanate
from his artwork. I challenged him on
this thought:
There is deep sadness and profound
happiness. They’re both different, but
happiness is totally ephemeral, volatile
… it quickly disappears. In sorrow, we
are aware that we are beings destined for
death without a possible alternative. We
are dying little by little and need to find
some way to alleviate this situation.
But in the end, González Palma
feels that it is the viewer who ultimately
decides the outcome of his work.
From the beginning, he has challenged
the viewer to look into the fixed,
powerful gaze of his subject, to question
perception and preconceived ideas, to let
go of social and cultural constructs and
the way we react to the world around
us. For him, the artistic process has been
to create images that invite the observer
to consider them through “emotional
contemplation” and permit other ways
of understanding.17
El Éxito de González Palma
Luis González Palma achieved recognition in his photographic career early
on and continues to do so. His work is
included in several public and private
collections, such as the Art Institute of
Chicago, Daros Foundation in Zürich,
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
in Paris, Houston Museum of Fine
Arts, and Fondation Cartier pour l’Art
Contemporain, also in Paris. Other
institutions that have collected his work
are the Fondazione Volume! in Rome,
Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogota,
Fogg Museum at Harvard University,
Minneapolis Institute of Art, and
Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts,
Hokuto, Japan. This is the short list.
His work has been published in
various other tomes on photography,
as well as in monographs focused on his
work alone, including El silencio de la
17. “Declaración de Artista,” Luis González Palma, web.
18. Lisa Sette in discussion with the author, December 2015.
6 4 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM
mirada (Peliti Associati, 1998) and Poems
of Sorrow (Arena Editions, 1999). A more
recent book chronicling the evolution
of his work was published in 2014 by
La Fábrica, Madrid, simply titled Luis
González Palma, which he co-authored
with Francisco Najera and Laura Catelli.
Twenty years ago, González
Palma’s photographs sold for as much
as $12,000, which surprised even him
at the time, and they continue to hold
if not surpass their original value. One
collector/dealer I know regrets not
paying closer attention to González
Palma back in the 1990s, specifically
because he wishes his own remarkable
art collection included a photograph or
two by the artist.
Phoenix gallery owner Lisa Sette
certainly recognized the significance
of Luis González Palma’s photographs
20 years ago and exhibited his body of
work El Circo: Envenenado de las Estrellas
(The Circus: Poisoned by the Stars) in
October–November 1995.
“I was drawn to the hauntingly
beautiful Maya faces,” says Lisa Sette.
She sensed that González Palma took
the photographs with a “certain respect
for the subject,”18 which has been a
Annunciation—Variation 10, 2007, archival inkjet print mounted to Sintra, 20 × 20 in., edition of 15.
controversial topic over the years, with
some critics claiming the artist exploits
his subjects. If anything, González
Palma has revealed the true majesty of
the Maya, aware of his own privileges
and racism toward him. “The Indians
are a marginal people in Guatemala, just
like I am a marginal person in the First
World. So I try to balance things.”19
Lisa Sette Gallery is now the main
representative for González Palma’s
work in the United States and Canada.
She kicked off the new relationship last
fall, almost exactly two decades after
El Circo, with a retrospective titled An
Intimate Complicity: Luis González Palma’s
20 Years of Looking Beyond. Asked how
things were going, Sette and the artist
agree that it’s going well.
“Luis is a joy to work with,” says
Sette. “I thrive on relationships that
involve deep, conceptual ideas and
seamless execution, both of which Luis
excels at.”
“The relationship is good,
respectful, and undoubtedly
professional,” says González Palma.
Sette moved her gallery to a
beautifully renovated, subterranean
building in midtown Phoenix in
summer 2014. Designed by famous
architect Al Beadle, it could not be more
fitting for the architect-turned-postmodern photographer to be represented
in such a classic structure.
My partner and I were fortunate
enough to catch González Palma’s
exhibit last November and were happy
to make the two-hour drive to Phoenix
to see not only this man’s work but to
also see Lisa Sette’s new gallery. Greeting
us as we walked down the stairs from the
parking lot was Las Ventanas de su Vestido,
a powerful portrait of an Indigenous
man looking toward the sky from his
underground surroundings. It was the
perfect introduction to the real work of
Luis González Palma.
gonzalezpalma.com
lisasettegallery.com
19. Elizabeth Culbert, “The Postmodern Romantic: An Interview with Luis González Palma,” Rain Taxi, 1998, web.
S P R IN G 2 0 1 6
| 65