The Centro Arte para la Paz hosts the presentation of the book Chalatenango luz y sombra: fotografías de Ralph Sprenkels y memorias de las comunidades repobladas

The book Chalatenango luz y sombra: fotografías de Ralph Sprenkels y memorias de las comunidades repobladas [Chalatenango Light and Shadow: Photographs by Ralph Sprenkels and Memories of the Repopulated Communities] brings together Ralph Sprenkels’s powerful photographs, accompanied by testimonies from communities repopulated during the Salvadoran postwar period.

Through its pages, the book invites readers on a profound journey through historical memory, narrated by women, men, young people, and children who lived through the conflict and its consequences. The images reflect pain, but also the resistance and capacity for reconstruction of communities that faced loss and the challenge of rebuilding their lives.

More than a visual record, Sprenkels’s work accompanied community processes, especially those of women who, in the search for their disappeared sons and daughters, faced great risks with courage.

This work, edited by Adriana Alas, Lidice Michelle Melara Minero, and Irina Carlota Silber, is a joint initiative of Western University, the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen [Museum of the Word and Image, MUPI], and Chalatenango communities as part of the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative. 

It offers a space to reflect, remember, and recognize the stories that shape the identity of the repopulated communities of Chalatenango.

The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.