The haunting gaze of Guatemala.

• Author: Snow, K. Mitchell

In striking portraits, photographer Luis Gonzales Palma captures the soul of his countrymen and their complex historical legacy

In his efforts to record the range of his homeland's experience, contemporary Guatemalan photographer Luis Gonzalez Palma has returned to the roots of photography. Like Joseph Nicephore Niepce, who made the first photograph by developing an asphaltum-coated pewter plate in a solution of lavender oil, Gonzalez Palma uses asphaltum to create his images. Its sepia tint lends an antique patina to his photographs, but the timelessness of his images springs from the heart of Guatemala's historical legacy.

Gonzalez Palma weaves traces of his nation's colonial past - crowned virgins, winged angels, and votive offerings - throughout his works to establish their cultural context. Yet it is the impassive faces of the indigenous people of Guatemala that remain etched in the viewer's memory. He captures his homeland in the eloquent poems he finds in his countrymen's faces. Their silent gaze has confronted museum and gallery visitors worldwide, confidently reaffirming the durability of this uniquely American people.

He is passionate about the elegance he finds reflected in early photographs. "They have an aura that lends them beauty," he explains. Many of his portraits echo the compositional devices used by Julia Margaret Cameron, who sought to record "the greatness of the inner man as well as the features of the outer man" in celebrated photographs of nineteenth-century politicians and thinkers. Gonzalez Palma's own portraits are inspired by Cameron's work and look as if they could have been taken during the same era. In reality, they are likenesses of his neighbors, ballerinas, even the laborers who work on the buildings he designs in his architectural practice.

Gonzalez Palma dresses his models with costumes that refer to European mythology and Christian iconography. Many of his images include winged figures. Sometimes these beings recall the gods of classical antiquity. More frequently they evoke traditional Catholic angels. Gonzalez Palma believes his angels suggest a fascination with liberty. At the same time, they illustrate the effects of Spanish colonization and link contemporary Guatemalans to European spiritual traditions.

Angels are not the only mythological symbols Gonzalez Palma has borrowed from the old world. Recent photographs also feature such legendary staples as the unicorn. Appropriating these characters and placing them in a Guatemalan context revitalizes mythological tradition and adds meaning to his work. "I think that a good part of the image's force lies in the fact that you encounter European mythology with Guatemalan faces," he says. "Replacing European features with those of Guatemalans says something, no?"

Gonzalez Palma points out that Guatemalan artists, unlike those in most other Spanish colonies, never gave their figures Indian faces. "In Baroque painting you can find Indian virgins, but not in Guatemala. I don't know why. The virgin is always shown as Spanish. You see that they ended up giving her Indian clothes. What they've done is dress her up. Her face is still a European face."

Placing Guatemalan players in traditional European roles also calls attention to the historical facts of the conquest. In Corona...