Labrador, Angela M

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ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Landscapes of ViolenceVolume 1 | Number 1 Article 710-2010REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todoslo sepanAngela M. LabradorUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst, alabra@anthro.umass.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/lovThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Landscapes of Violence by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contactscholarworks@library.umass.edu.Recommended CitationLabrador, Angela M. (2010) "REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepan," Landscapes of Violence: Vol. 1 : No. 1 ,Article 7.Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/lov/vol1/iss1/7REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepanThis book review is available in Landscapes of Violence: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/lov/vol1/iss1/7  So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepan. Photographs by Daniel Hernández-Salazar. Edited by Oscar Iván Maldonado. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Pp. xii and 85, 83 plates and notes. USD $39.95.  So That All Shall Know (Para que todos lo sepan) takes its name from Daniel Hernández-Salazar’s iconic photographic print of an angel with bone wings cupping his mouth in mid shout. Although but one piece among 83 that are beautifully reproduced in this compilation, his angel stands as a symbol of the role of the artist as an intervener in the collective memory process following civil war. Under the editorship of Oscar Iván Maldonado, this volume offers more than an artist’s portfolio; it bears witness to the two hundred thousand victims of the Guatemalan genocide from 1960–1996 and offers critical commentary on the power of art to engage with the politics of historical erasure and memory reactivation in postcolonial societies. The linkages between Hernández-Salazar’s art and activism are made clearly throughout the book beginning with Rigoberta Menchú Tum’s foreword, which pays tribute to his photography as contributing to the cultural survival and healing of the Guatemalan people. Following a brief introduction by the editor, four text commentaries and three portfolios provide diverse viewpoints on the successes, and perhaps limits, to Hernández-Salazar’s interventions in the historical erasure of the human rights abuses carried out by the Guatemalan military and police forces during the civil war. The entire volume is presented bilingually with complete English and Spanish translations.      In the first essay, geographer W. George Lovall anecdotally recalls four memories of encountering Hernández-Salazar’s polyptych, “Clarification” (Esclarecimiento) (1998), which graces the cover of the Archdiocese of Guatemala’s human rights report, Guatemala:Never Again (Guatemala: Nunca más) (1998) and serves as a touchstone throughout the book. Four bare-chested men with superimposed “wings” of human scapulae face the viewer; the first covers his mouth, the second his eyes, the third his ears, and the fourth is the angel from “So That All Shall Know” (1998), who breaks from his brothers by proclaiming to the world the horrors that the others cannot. Lovall’s recollections serve as a springboard to place the artwork in a historical and political context by providing the reader with a capsule political history of Guatemala as well as the myriad ways in which the iconic artwork has been appropriated to speak to these struggles. The second and third essays provide a valuable frame for readers to interpret the three portfolios of Hernández-Salazar’s work. Miguel Flores Castellanos, Guatemalan scholar of Central American photography, provides an art historical perspective in the second essay. He describes the evolution of Hernández-Salazar’s oeuvre, from his references to early ethnographic photographers of Guatemala, the 1Labrador: REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepanPublished by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2010  large format of commercial photography, and the documentary goals of photojournalism, to his later postmodern representations in his collages, mixed media works, and public art installations. Political scientist and artist, Michael A. Weinstein broadens Castellanos’ analysis in the third essay by offering a biographical sketch of Hernández-Salazar as a product of globalization. Under his pen, Hernández-Salazar marries postmodern art forms with humanist subject matter, an apparently unusual pairing for contemporary artists. Weinstein presents a close reading of the second portfolio, Eros + Thanatos, which culminates in the “Clarification” polyptych, to demonstrate the highly political nature of Hernández-Salazar’s work along with his fundamental reverence for human life.       The three art portfolios reproduced in the book follow the artist’s evolution as laid out by Castellanos and Weinstein from photojournalist to photo collage and mixed media artist, and finally to public artist–activist. The first portfolio, Daniel Hernández-Salazar Photojournalist, reproduces 26 of his works from 1985–2005. The black and white and color prints capture moments taken from mass demonstrations, memorial services, and forensic investigations of the victims of Guatemala’s genocide as well as images of Guatemalan military forces. The artist references the broader historical struggle of Mayan peoples in Guatemala in his “Clash of Two Worlds, 1492–1992” (Encuentro de dos mundos, 1492–1992) (1992), in which unarmed women and children from the Cajolá plantation face off against the all-male National Police force in riot gear.  The second portfolio, Eros + Thanatos, moves away from documentation and into the representation of the violence of the struggle between love and death. Here, the artist plays with representations of masculinity and the vulnerability of the human form in the face of violence. Nude males lay across railroad tracks or Death’s lap in reference to the Pietà. Skeletal elements are superimposed on living human forms such as the simply evocative, “Memory” (Memoria) (1997) in which a human hand can just be seen beneath the labeled bones of an excavated victim.  The third portfolio, Memory of an Angel, is a reflexive meditation on the former portfolios, combining the photojournalism of the first with the representations of the second. In these prints, Hernández-Salazar documents his  public art installations of So That All Shall Know in Guatemala City in 1999 and at various international sites of conscience from 2001–2006. The fusion of art and activism is most apparent in this series, and perhaps most so in the photographs of the attempted obliteration of his work. However, the limits of his interventions may also be apparent in the installations beyond Guatemala, where the angel appears arrestingly static and disconnected from his surroundings.  Such dissonance prompts questions about how place-based collective memory is and how visual representations may or may not be able to transcend those geographical boundaries. These questions are raised in the final essay by Steven 2Landscapes of Violence, Vol. 1 [2010], No. 1, Art. 7https://scholarworks.umass.edu/lov/vol1/iss1/7  Hoelscher, professor of American Studies and Geography. This essay will probably be of most interest to readers of Landscapes of Violence, since it is the most theoretically developed piece regarding the intersections between memory, place, and art, and the role that human creativity can play in activating collective memory in the wake of horrific violence.  So That All Shall Know transcends disciplines and offers much more than a traditional art book; it is a testament to Daniel Hernández-Salazar’s art-based activism and to the broader struggles of the Guatemalan peoples, including the indigenous Maya and rural mestizos. While the book could have benefitted from more commentary from within the struggle, some may argue that the photography was an appropriate and fitting medium for such contributions. In either case, that art may contribute to the process of healing and the struggle for social justice is an inspiring and heartening lesson in the very real, and at times painful, work of remembering the past to envision a more humane future.      Angela Labrador University of Massachusetts Amherst  3Labrador: REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepanPublished by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst, 2010

REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepan

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REVIEW: So That All Shall Know/Para que todos lo sepan

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