Yael Martínez
Magnum Foundation invites you to an evening with Yael Martínez, Magnum Photographer and longtime Magnum Foundation grantee, in honor of his new photobook, Luciérnagas. Martínez will be joined in conversation with scholar Dr. Oswaldo Zavala, Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at the City University of New York (CUNY). Books will be available for purchase, with a reception following the conversation. This event is presented in conjunction with Magnum Photos, CUNY Mexican Studies Institute, and This Book Is True.
Monday, May 5, 2025 | 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM ET
In-person and online
Doors open at 6:00 PM
59 East 4th St, 7W | New York, NY 10003
** RSVP Required to Attend In-Person **
For virtual attendees, the zoom link is available via the RSVP button
About the book:
Luciérnagas is in many ways a ritual. An attempt to exorcise the unresolved traumas in the spectral landscape of Magnum Photographer Yael Martínez’s homeland in Guerrero, México.
The work began in 2013 after three members of the artist's family disappeared. This tragedy began an investigation into the pervasive violence of organized crime in the region, how it infiltrates daily life and transforms the spirit of a place. He later spent time alongside other families with missing loved ones. Through these encounters, dots were connected beyond the artist's immediate family and across borders into Honduras, Brazil, and the US, forming a constellation imbued with the shared experience of endemic violence.
Throughout the work, images are threaded together by diaristic notes from the field. They were written by Martínez as he grappled with the range of emotions presented in the aftermath of loss and the process of navigating bereavement with families who were never given a chance to mourn. 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.
Between 2019 to 2023, Martínez began a series of interventions into his photographs, piercing holes through the prints and then backlighting them. Bright rays emanate through the pictures in free flowing shapes, throwing light against a dark backdrop. In this process the light metamorphosizes with the scenes depicted and conjures an alchemy where something restorative, tentatively optimistic and resilient occurs.
It is in Luciérnaga's blend of fantasy and reality that the well-covered topics of violence in the Latin American context are re-examined. Feelings are expressed rather than evoked, and via the ordinary characters who guide us through this book, scope is given to the humanity of those enduring a difficult territory, whilst confronting the personal cost of violence. Now brought together in book form for the first time, the disappearances at the hands of organised crime and state violence are given a new representation, one where light illuminates the darkness as the firefly leads us into new possible realms.
About the presenters:
Born in Guerrero Mexico in 1984, Yael Martínez creates work that addresses fractured communities in his native Mexico. He often works symbolically to evoke a sense of the emptiness, absence and pain suffered by those affected by the state and organized crime. Martínez has earned a number of honors for his photography, including the 2022 Wayfinder Award from The National Geographic society, membership in Mexico’s National System of Arts Creators (SNCA), and the 2019 W. Eugene Smith Fund Grant. Martínez won The World Press Photo in the region of North and Central America in the Open Format category in 2022 and second prize in the World Press Photo contest in the Long-Term Projects category in 2019. He is a fellow of the Photography and Social Justice Program of Magnum Foundation. Martínez’s work has been featured in solo and group shows in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States. In addition to National Geographic, his work has been widely published in Aperture, The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Vogue Italy, Bloomberg News, and Vrij Nederland. Martínez joined Magnum Photos in 2020 as a nominee, as an associate member in 2022, and as a full member in 2024.
Oswaldo Zavala (Ciudad Juárez, 1975) is Professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture with a joint appointment at the College of Staten Island and at The Graduate Center, both institutions part of the City University of New York (CUNY). His work explores post-national imaginaries, representations of violence at the US-Mexico border, and the exhaustion of discourses on modernity in the Latin American narrative of the last two decades. He is the author of Los cárteles no existen. Narcotráfico y cultura en México (Malpaso 2018), Volver a la modernidad. Genealogías de la literatura mexicana de fin de siglo (Albatros 2017), and La modernidad insufrible. Roberto Bolaño en los límites de la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea (NCSRLL 2015). He also co-edited: with Magdalena Perkowska (Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY), Tiranas ficciones: política y poética de la obra de Horacio Castellanos Moya (Pittsburgh: IILI, Antonio Cornejo Polar Series, 2018); with Viviane Mahieux (University of California at Irvine) Tierras de nadie. El norte en la narrativa mexicana contemporánea (México: Tierra Adentro, 2012) and with José Ramón Ruisánchez (University of Houston) Materias dispuestas: Juan Villoro ante la crítica (Barcelona: Candaya, 2011). His article "Imagining the US-Mexico Drug War: The Critical Limits of Narconarratives," obtained the 2015 award for Best Essay in the Humanities granted by the Mexico Section of the Latin American Studies Association. He received an honorable mention in Mexico's 2017 National Journalism Award for his essay "Nada que ver en la frontera del narco. Los imagentextos de Julián Cardona."
Magnum Foundation is in an elevator building and has a restroom that is wheelchair accessible and gender-neutral. For access requests or questions, please contact events@magnumfoundation.org.
Masks are currently encouraged, but not required.
Magnum Foundation events are made possible by the Henry Nias Foundation and our Circle of Friends. .
