Punctured Photographs by Yael Martínez Illuminate the Daily Ruptures of Systemic Violence
“El Hombre y la Montaña” (December 31, 2020). All images courtesy of This Book Is True, shared with permission
Punctured Photographs by Yael Martínez Illuminate the Daily Ruptures of Systemic Violence
June 13, 2025
ArtBooksPhotographySocial Issues
Grace Ebert
Share
Pin
Bookmark
The Mexican state of Guerrero lies on the southern Pacific coast and is home to the popular tourist destination of Acapulco. It’s also one of the nation’s most violent areas due to drug trafficking and cartel presence, and is one of six states that account for nearly half of the country’s total homicides.
For artist and photographer Yael Martínez, the reality of organized crime became more pronounced when, in 2013, three of his family members disappeared. He began to speak with others in his community who had experienced similar traumas and to connect threads across the borders of Mexico to Honduras, Brazil, and the United States.
“Itzel at home,” Guerrero, Mexico
Luciérnagas, which translates to fireflies, comes from Martínez’s meditation on this extreme brutality that “infiltrates daily life and transforms the spirit of a place,” a statement says. Now published in a volume by This Book Is True, the poetic series punctures dark, nighttime photographs with minuscule holes. When backlit, the images bear a dazzling constellation of light that distorts the images in which violence isn’t depicted but rather felt.
In one work, for example, a man holding a firework stands in a poppy field, a perforated cloud of smoke enveloping his figure. He’s performing an annual ritual on the sacred hill of La Garza, and the setting exemplifies a poignant contradiction between ancestral cultures and a crop that has been subsumed by capitalism and is essential to cartel power. A statement elaborates:
We don’t see death in Luciérnaga, but its omnipresence is felt throughout, lingering in the shadows of each photograph. Each image painfully underwritten by the result of a calculated violence that visited unseen and undetected, leaving behind the immense void of a vanished loved one. And yet there is always a sense of hope that informs the making of this work.
Luciérnagas is available from This Book Is True. Find more from Martínez on Instagram.
“Toro” (2018), Guerrero, Mexico
“Abuelo-Estrella” (December 21, 2020), Cochoapa El Grande, Guerrero, Mexico
“Levantada de Cruz” (2021)
“El Río de la Memoria y Mis Hijas” (2022)
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.
Hide advertising
Save your favorite articles
Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop
Receive members-only newsletter
Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms
Join us today!
$7/month
$75/year
Explore membership options
Next article More
