Graciela Sacco. Enfrentados (serie Tensión Admisible), 2011; photographic inlay on wood, installed on wall. Courtesy of Diana Lowenstein Gallery and Artist.

The work of the six Latin American and Latino artists in Hidden Histories personalizes the staggering statistics of displaced, marginalized, and murdered individuals, both historically and presently. Using commonplace materials, these artists attempt to give voice to those who have been silenced or forgotten. At the front of the gallery, a broken wooden barricade overlaid with an image of Argentinian protesters confronting military police juts outs from the wall. Graciela Sacco’s Enfrentados (serie Tensión Admisible) [Confronted (Admissible Tension Series)] has a fractured barrier and an air of resistance; it stands as the lone positive response to the struggle against injustice.

Teresa Margolles. La Búsqueda (The Search), 2014; multimedia installation with sound; 112.5 x 71 ¼ x 47 ¼ in., 112.5 x 38 x 47 ¼ in., and 112.5 x 52 x 47 ¼ in. Photo: Thomas Strub.

In Untitled (Mobius), artist Luis González Palma fabricated a roll of felt resembling a blanket or rug that reveals the face of a young woman obscured by red threads. The woman is from one of Guatemala’s vulnerable indigenous communities. Lacking basic human rights, these communities have been held back and suppressed. The contradiction of revealing and obscuring, along with the title’s reference to a Möbius strip, alludes to the past and present marginalization of these people.

Doris Salcedo. Untitled, 1995; wood, concrete, steel, glass, and cloth; 110 × 47 × 14 ½ in. Photo: Ken Howie.

The Colombian civil war and ensuing unrest and violence motivated Doris Salcedo to create works wrought with emotional and psychological tensions. Her untitled piece from 1995 is one of a large group of sculptures combining domestic wooden furniture with cement. An armoire has been filled with cement and rendered dysfunctional; the furniture and its associations with domesticity and the body become evocative of death and entombment.

Vincent Valdez. The Strangest Fruit, 2014; pencil on paper; 40 x 26 in.

In contrast to Salcedo’s more abstract references, there are two figurative drawings by Vincent Valdez from his The Strangest Fruit series. Inspired by the history of lynched Mexicans and Mexican Americans from the late 1800s well into the 1930s, the title is borrowed from Abel Meripool’s poem “Strange Fruit,” made famous by Billie Holiday’s 1930s recording of the same name. The haunting lyrics use the metaphor of “strange fruit” to characterize victims hanged from trees. Valdez individualizes the erased histories of Latinos by drawing his friends in the positions of the dead. Depicted in modern clothing, the young men in these drawings poetically reference the current state of racial discrimination toward Latinos in the United States.

Annie Lopez. Sighting Mexicans in Phoenix, 2012; cyanotype on paper; 26 ½ x 17 ½ in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Similarly, Phoenix-based artist Annie Lopez is a fourth-generation Mexican American who incorporates her personal history into works that echo the sentiments of discrimination that underpin the exhibition. Sighting Mexicans in Phoenix (2012) is a photograph of her mother and aunt walking happily down the street in the 1950s, printed with gun sights over their bodies in reference to current-day racial profiling. Naturalized Citizens (2013) uses her family’s naturalization papers to create a cyanotype paper dress that alludes to the need to display one’s citizenship when it is so often called into question just by outward appearance.

While the works in Hidden Histories bravely assert a multitude of issues in Latin America and the U.S., the question lingers as to why the exhibition is sequestered in a small gallery wrapped around the freight elevator. The Phoenix Art Museum’s concurrent exhibition features works by such heavy-hitting Latino artists as Alfredo Jaar, Vik Muniz, José Bedia Valdés, Félix González-Torres, and Luis Molina-Pantin, among others. It would have been refreshing to see the Hidden Histories works, more than half of which are by women, expanded in a larger space to allow the sound of those voices to go from a whisper to a shout.

Hidden Histories in Latin American Art is on view at the Phoenix Art Museum through August 23, 2015.

Like what you’ve read? Let’s keep it going: Donate to our Writers Fund.

Alfred A. Cohn. Untitled, c. 1920; platinum print. Courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona.

In a world where modern technology has made many traditional artistic processes obsolete, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and the Phoenix Art Museum have launched a historical investigation of the platinum print. Referencing the artistic and fiscal value of this photographic method, All That Glitters Is Not Gold is an intimate, chronologically curated exhibition that begins with the invention of the platinum print in 1873, and follows its use and development in portraiture up through its revival in the 1970s and into contemporary culture.

Walking through this photo-historical time lapse, visitors see not only a shift in subject matter, but also a noticeable change in photographic quality. In a progression of dark gray to white, the colors of the walls become lighter to visually separate the time periods. Displayed on a dark gray wall is a small, untitled, dream-like portrait by Alice Boughton (c. 1900). Platinum prints are appreciated for their vast range of values and soft renderings, but even in this early moment of photographic portraiture, the indirect light and figure placement within the composition demonstrate a desire for experimentation. Through works of photographic experimentation, the exhibition unexpectedly addresses the status of photography as fine art.

The section dedicated to photographic pictorialism highlights 19th-century photographers who experimented with platinum prints and light to create works with aesthetic qualities similar to those of paintings or drawings. At first glance, Alfred A. Cohn’s untitled photograph (c. 1920) appears to be an illustration. An image of a busy street corner has deep black silhouettes and overlapping shadows that resemble layers of ink washes. Photography was initially used for documentation—to capture visual information. Because early definitions of fine art excluded photography, many people experimented with technique in order to overcome limitations and have their work taken seriously as art.

With the accessibility of high-quality cameras and the overabundance of found images from social media, the line between photography as a commonplace technological process and as a fine art continues to be blurred. While the exhibition recalls the history and development of the platinum print, it also sheds light on its revival within contemporary photography. For some contemporary photographers, a return to the outdated monochrome process used with platinum prints is appealing because it is a return to the notion that art should be unique. All That Glitters Is Not Gold allows us to rediscover the artistic process involved in film photography and appreciate the creative value of these one-of-a-kind platinum prints.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Platinum Photography from the Center for Creative Photography is on view at the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, through March 1, 2015.

Christina Nafziger holds a degree in Art History and Museum Studies with a focus in Contemporary Performance and Photography. She currently works as the Program Coordinator at Xico, a Latino art and culture organization in Phoenix, Arizona.