John Wood

Luis González Palma

Luis Gonzalez Palma's photographs are marked by a rich texture of transcendent symbols and an open-armed embrace of beauty. Crowns, roses, and wings appear again and again, yet his world is one haunted by grief. He has said, "I live in a country (Guatemala) where there is mysticism and violence at the same time. Where you are enjoying nature and the helicopters are flying overhead to bomb some region, where you know that as you are working, someone is being killed or someone is being baptized." However, Gonzalez Palma is no photojournalist. His landscape is not Guatemala's, but the soul's, and it is filled with angels and terrifying, mythic beasts. The shadows that pervade it stem less from politics than from the sorrow of the human condition. For all the pain in his work, though, he never takes us to the point where we must abandon all hope. His subject is grief -- never despair.

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