Published in 1998, Antonio Turok’s Chiapas: The End of Silence is a documentation of an area considered by many to be at the cultural crossroads for the Americas.
It is a classic black and white documentary which aims to record a unique way of living for a community stuck between new and old, modern and traditional.
Some photographers may dismiss Turok’s approach and aesthetics as old-fashioned because in today’s hyper fast-changing world where everyone is basically being rapidly bombarded with too much in cyberspace, this way of documenting a community is even more precious.
Books like Turok’s will always have a place in my heart since my understanding and appreciation of photography is still very old-fashioned and I won’t apologise for it.
It really brings us back to one of the basic ‘responsibilities’ of photography which is to shed light on those who don’t always see the light.
The world is always better off when we get access to information that is usually off-limit to the lay person.
These documentarians journey and sweat to bring the stories and people closer to us and this can never be wrong.
