Luciérnagas

The work began in 2013 after three members of Martínez's family disappeared. This tragedy began an investigation into the pervasive violence of organised 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 Martinez 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, Martinez 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.