Guns without Borders in Mexico and Central America Confronting the Consequences of Violence At the center of Knights!, visitors are confronted with stark and disturbing images of contemporary violence in Mexico and Guatemala. What do these poignant documentary photographs have to do with King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table? “Weapons are made to do harm, and not to talk about this would be to tell only part of the story,” says Museum Director Matthias Waschek. “It was important to me that we acknowledge the existence of arms and armor in contemporary society.” Guns Without Borders is a collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and features photography from the frontlines of today’s epidemic of gun violence. Dominic Bracco II, Carlos Javier Ortiz, and Louie Palu photograph the violence of gangs and drug cartels in Mexico and Guatemala, documenting the complex socio-economic issues that are both a cause and an effect of that violence. Images include Bracco’s photo of a man and his pregnant partner shot dead in their truck
in Juárez and Palu’s portrait of children crowding around a Mexico murder scene. Guns Without Borders is about human consequences in a world dominated by arms and armor. “Literary ideas about chivalry and courtly manners are an important theme in Knights!,” says Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Nancy Burns, “but it would have been irresponsible not to also acknowledge the violence that weapons represent.” Carlos Javier Ortiz, whose work is shown in the photo above, sees little difference between today’s Guatemalan drug cartels and American mobsters during Prohibition. He points to the romanticization of figures like Al Capone and Bugsy Segal. For him, it’s just a matter of time until the terror inflicted by the cartels is glorified by popular culture. Those who met their fate centuries ago at the end of a knight’s sword might agree. Carlos Javier Ortiz, Rioters, 2007, Photo © Carlos Javier Ortiz/Pulitzer Center
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