Luis Corzo – Pasaco, 1996 – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

It is a good sign when you start looking at a book and cannot put it down. That is what happened to me with Luis Corzo’s photobook, Pasaco, 1996. Corzo uses photos and texts, in English and Spanish, to tell the story of his and his father’s kidnapping for ransom in Guatemala. A gripping narrative, laid out in spare, just-the-facts, bare-bones style, it reminds me of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

The book is organized around seven series of photographs, each followed by pages of explanatory texts that correspond to the images on the preceding pages. The texts are printed on different colored paper and they identify and provide information about the pictures. The photographs are uninflected and simple, usually with a straight-on frontal angle of view. Most are color, but there are some black and white photos from newspapers or videos. There is also a real color photo pasted on a page over the printed version.

The photographs and texts take us through the events by showing the people, places, and objects involved. We see the family home, Luis’ mother and grandfather, the house where Luis and his father were held, stills from a proof-of-life video, the place where a ransom note was left, a letter pleading for help written by the victims to their family, the restaurant where Luis’ father’s amputated finger was left, the family members involved in making decisions, the places Luis and his father were released, money that could have been used to bribe the local police to kill the kidnappers instead of taking them to trial, a bulletproof vest for Luis to wear at trial, a safe room in the family house, photos of the prison where the gang leader was held, and visual evidence of Luis’ visit to the gang leader in prison.

What we do not see pictured is the anguish and stress and fear involved in what must have been a traumatic nightmare, but you fill in the blanks as you read the texts and look at the photos, and the anguish and stress and fear ooze out.

It would be easy to dismiss the photographs in Pasaco, 1996 for not being strong artistically. But judging them individually misses the point of how the photos work together visually as a book to carry the narrative. The photographs do exactly what they are supposed to do; the fact that they are plain and understated only reinforces the convincing reality of the experience documented in the book.

Successful photobooks share memorable experiences or take us somewhere new. Pasaco, 1996 does that and more and reminds us not to take our situation for granted: bad things do happen to good people.

Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

____________

Luis Corzo – Pasaco, 1996

Photographer: Luis Corzo (born in 1990 in Guatemala, lives in Brooklyn)

Language: English and Spanish

Text: Luis Corzo

Essay: Claudia Méndez Arriaza

Design: Claudia Rubin

Printing: Narayana Press

Hardcover with tipped-in photograph; 41 color, 8 B/W photographs; 96 pages: sewn binding; ISBN 978-91-987607-1-2; 110 pages; 9 X 11 in.

____________

Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.