Image, Memory, and the Paradox of Peace
April 17th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I strongly urge anyone who is in Austin and cares about human rights or Latin America or documentary photography to get thee to the Harry Ransom Center at UT. There you will find an exhibit titled “Inside El Salvador.” It features more than 100 photographs concerning that nation’s 12-year civil war and its aftermath. The exhibit is based in part on a collection of photographs called Learn to See, El Salvador: The Work of 30 Photographers.
The exhibit brings back a tumultuous time when a country the size of Massachusetts became a focal point in the Cold War and a proving ground for US-imported counterinsurgency. Here are images from all the low-points: the massacre at El Mozote, the killing of the three U.S. nuns and a lay worker, the murder of six Jesuit priests and their housekeepers, and the body dump for the disappeared at El Playon. The latter was taken by photographer John Hoagland, one of six photographers in the exhibition who lost their lives while working in El Salvador.The surviving photographers, rather than accept money for the exhibition, had the Ransom Center pay to install a similar exhibit in El Salvador at El Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen.
The exhibit at UT kicked off today with a two-day conference titled Image, Memory, and the Paradox of Peace. The speakers tonight included former ambassador to El Salvador Robert White, journalism professor Mark Danner, and two extraordinary photographers who helped create the collection, Susan Meiselas and Harry Mattison. Day two of the conference will feature numerous panels on war and peace and the effects of violence. The day will end with a session on martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Many of these photos are familiar to those who have followed El Salvador. Yet to see them together, along with the mountains of commentary and context put together by the Ransom Center, is very moving. Meiselas ended her remarks by saying that they had hoped to “enrich two worlds with their photographs.” And indeed they did. The humanity these photographers captured and the struggles of those times speak truths that continue to be relevant today.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:24 am
What’s happening down there at TO HQ? Perry just unzipped a whole stinkin’ can of What If, and nary a post?
This blog should be out in front everyday, reacting to this kind of news and everything else that’s going on in close to real time. It should be having fun, linking to video, audio, pics, music, etc. It needs to build an online community that is the equivalent of what the print/subscriber community used to feel like.
I know there’s never enough staff or money to to all the things y’all want to do, but out here one can feel how the torch is being passed from this venerable institution to the bloggers in the state.
TO needs to get back out in front and lead, not follow.