Luis González Palma

Louis González Palma was born in Guatemala-City, Guatemala in 1957 and studied architecture and cinematography at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. He took his first photographs on a borrowed camera, featuring traveling dancers. In 1989 he had his first individual exhibition, “Autoconfesion”, at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New York. Gonzalez Palma became a household name after his work was displayed at the Houston FotoFest in 1992.

Palma’s photography combines symbolism from both Catholicism and indigenous beliefs, creating portraits of Mayans rich with themes of solitude, pain, and stoicism. His earliest works were more collage oriented, but throughout the nineties he began treating his prints with sepia, asphaltum, and alcohol. The result is a portrait which seems antique in coloring with certain elements, especially the eyes of the subject, in bleached, penetrating white. His work is rich with symbolism and undercurrents relating to the decades of civil war he witnessed in Guatemala and the subjugation of the indigenous Mayans.

More recently his work has become introspective, and self-portraits appeared for the first time in his photography. He has also shifted in media to black and white prints on Kodalith, layered on gold leaf and encased in resin. Of this process, the artist states, “The resin is not a visual whim; it is a part of the work, as important as the gold and the photo. It is what allows not only unifying and fusing the materials used, but also ‘fossilizes’ my stare, concentrates it in a physiological irrational thickness, the same as amber can retain an insect and preserves it in its fragility.”

Gonzalez Palma has been featured in collections in galleries and major museums since the early nineties, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Berlin Museum, and Fonds National D’Art Contemporain in Paris.

Education

Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Architecture, Cinematography

Collections

Art Institute of Chicago
Berlin Museum
Bronx Museum of the Arts
Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico City)
Maison European de la Photographie (Paris)
Fogg Museum (Harvard University)
MFA Houston
Museo de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)

Exhibitions

Pan American Art Gallery, Dallas TX 2006
Schneider Gallery, Chicago, IL 2006
Venice Biennial 2005
Martin Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis, MN 2005
Galeria Fucares, Madrid 2004

Selected Bibliography

The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes, Christopher James, Delmar Thomsom Learning, Canada, 2002.
Chorus of Light, Ned Rifkin, Jane Jackson, Thomas W. Southall, and Ingrid Sischy with Elton John, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2000.
Luis Gonzalez Palma: Poems of Sorrow, John Wood, Arena, Sante Fe, New Mexico, April 1, 1999.
The Body and the Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present, John Pultz, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1995.
Luis Gonzalez Palma (Tesis/Ensayo), Luis Gonzalez Palma and Maria Orive, Azotea Editorial Fotografica, November 1, 1993.

Grants & Awards

Nominated for the BMW-Paris Photo award 2004
Best show in 2004 at the National Museum of Santiago, Chile

Monographs

Luis Gonzalez Palma, introduction by Maria Cristina Orive, La Azotea, Photographic Editorial of Latin America, S.R.L., Buenos Aires, 1993.
Il Silencio Dei Maya, Luis Gonzalez Palma, Peliti Associati, Photo & Co., Verona, 1998.
Luis Gonzalez Palma: Poems of Sorrow, text by John Wood, Arena Editions, Sante Fe, 1999.

Other noteworthy publications: la Biennale de Venezia, 2001 and 2005.

For more information, please visit www.gonzalezpalma.com.