A Place with No Rest

The Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) presents A Place with No Rest, an exhibition that centers on the work of Guatemalan photographer Luis González-Palma. The exhibition will remain open to the public through May 26 of this year.

González-Palma conceived photographs with the intention of obtaining images that would contain, showcase and express the essence of communication. His powerful photographs invite viewers to examine the manners in which we react to the world.

The earlier works by González-Palma focused on frontal portraits used as metaphors. After experiencing a series of geographic and emotional changes that he poured into his photography—in collaboration with his wife, Graciela De Oliveira—González-Palma centered his attention on beauty as political power, on the religious experience intertwined with love and pain, and on the conversation between the individual and his world, in a society in which emotional bonds are inadequate while the emotions are complex.

The most recent group of works in the exhibition is Bodyguards (2009). It consists of portraits of bodyguards that work for some of the most prominent Guatemalan families. They are the protectors and, as result, their presence inspires the feeling of being safe but also the menace of the violence that renders these people necessary. From a distance, these portraits offer a more approachable access to these individuals than we are accustomed to.

González-Palma was awarded in 1999 the "Baume et Mercer" PhotoEspaña Grand Prize, and in 2008 collaborated in the stage production of the Death and the Maiden at the Malmö Opera, in Sweden. He is author of several monographs published about his work, including Poems of Sorrow (Arena Editions, New Mexico, USA), and The Silence of the Gaze (Peliti Associati, Rome).