Recuerdo: A Lens on Latin America’s Haunted Soul

The AGO

Latin America bleeds in silence. Not always, but often enough, the silence hums just beneath the surface of its hills, shantytowns, and marketplaces. You don’t forget what’s been done there — and you shouldn’t. The Art Gallery of Ontario doesn’t let you. Not with Recuerdo — not this time.

Recuerdo, meaning memory and “I remember,” is no delicate nod to nostalgia. It’s an invocation, a spectral reckoning. One hundred photographs — eyes that do not blink — from Mexico’s shadows to Chile’s rusting stadiums, El Salvador’s fields to Argentina’s grieving mothers. Here, the camera isn’t a tool of documentation. It’s a confession booth, a tribunal, a funeral procession marching in monochrome and blood tones.

These are not still lives. They are unsettled ghosts. Graciela Iturbide captures the ceremonial in the mundane, women in Oaxacan robes defying centuries with a stare. Manuel Álvarez Bravo gives you a portrait of death that rivals any painter’s brush. Diaspora artists — Canadian, exiled, hybrid in heart and home — stitch together fragments of dislocated identity. Every frame ache with the question: Who are we if we cannot stay? Who are we if we cannot return?

The body becomes the battlefield. Gender, sexuality, resistance — posed not for seduction, but declaration. These are not Instagram self-portraits. They are reclamations. A woman looks back at you as if to say, I’ve survived dictators, borders, silence. You will not frame me.

And then the land. Oh, the land—desecrated, desiccated, defiant. Skyscrapers claw at colonial scars. Jungle and desert etched with the ruin of conquest and oil. The landscape here is not scenery; it is testimony.

Recuerdo offers no closure. No comforting takeaway. It provides a gallery of truths — some brutal, some divine, all unignorable. It reminds you that memory is not a place you visit. It’s a place that revisits you.

Will you remember what you saw? Or will you leave it at the door with your coat and conscience?

For more information on the exhibition, including ticketing and membership details, please visit the AGO's official website: Recuerdo: Latin American Photography at the AGO.​Art Gallery of Ontario+6Art Gallery of Ontario+6Art Gallery of Ontario+6

A Note from the Bandstand – A Breather Between Choruses

Well folks, we ducked the sucker punch. Canada blinked, shook off the creeping doom, and gave us all just enough breathing room to exhale, pour a decent cup of coffee, and remember what matters. I’m talking soul-deep things—shutter clicks that freeze a moment, chord changes that ripple the skin, and cultural breadcrumbs we follow to find our better selves.

There’s no shortage of political hollering on Substack. Think of them as the angry horn section, always blasting. Me? I try to solo like a sideman with stories—off the melody, from the gut, always swinging. If something resonates, great. If not, I’m still playing the tune because that’s who I am. I don’t write from the algorithm. I write from lived days, battered Lumix straps, jam sessions, side-stage wisdom, and a restless pulse that says, Keep going, brother.

To those who’ve subscribed, read, and riffed back—thank you. And if you ever feel like dropping in on the yearly plan, know it’s not for perks or paywalls, but to keep the ink flowing, the camera loaded, and the music honest. I’m part of this crazy landscape—not climbing anyone else’s ladder, just carving my own groove in the dirt.

See you between the lines.