f{"id":40881,"date":"2025-04-23T12:41:34","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40881"},"modified":"2025-04-23T12:41:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:41:35","slug":"legacy-of-lies-photographer-robert-nickelsberg-on-el-salvador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/04\/23\/legacy-of-lies-photographer-robert-nickelsberg-on-el-salvador\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Legacy of Lies\u2019: Photographer Robert Nickelsberg on El Salvador"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nickelsberg will do a Q&A on his new book, \u2018Legacy of Lies: El Salvador 1981\u20131984,\u2019 at City College on April 24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A by\u00a0GUSTAVO HERNANDEZ<\/a><\/strong> April 21, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Four
Villagers observe three ERP guerrillas. San Agust\u00edn, Usulut\u00e1n department July 5, 1983 Courtesy of Robert Nickelsberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Before journalism moved at the speed of social media, before photos could go live within seconds, Robert Nickelsberg loaded 35mm film into three separate cameras and put his undeveloped rolls on a plane to New York. Days later, he might see just one image in Time<\/em> magazine. The rest sat in a box, waiting for their moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nickelsberg has spent decades in conflict zones. In El Salvador, during the early 1980s, he walked with guerrilla fighters, followed government troops, and captured the violence that shaped daily life..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His new book, \u201cLegacy of Lies: El Salvador 1981\u20131984,\u201d features a powerful selection of black-and-white images, many of them images that went unpublished for decades. At Time<\/em>, only a handful of photos from each assignment made it to print. The rest stayed in the dark, overlooked completely once the magazine shifted toward color. Decades later, Nickelsberg and a small team of archivists finally reviewed the dozens of three-ring binders filled with images. The result is both a historical record and a personal reckoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nickelsberg will be speaking about the book and his career in a live Q&A hosted by The Guardsman at the City College of San Francisco on Thursday, April 24. The event is 6-8 p.m. at the Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia St., Multi-Use Room 109. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"Unidentified
Unidentified men look at two corpses in the city morgue in La Libertad, El Salvador, on Aug. 10, 1984. Both victims were shot in the face and showed additional signs of bruising. Courtesy of Robert Nickelsberg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When you got the chance to comb through those stacks of archived negatives, what was it like emotionally to revisit those images?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never saw my film back then. I sent everything to New York unprocessed, and the editors made the choices. Maybe ten frames would get looked at, one or two might run, and that was it, remember Time was and still is a weekly hardcopy magazine. I didn\u2019t even get to see the contact sheets. I never knew if I had mis-framed something, or if I had actually done something really effective. But I never really saw my mistakes. And photography, when you look at it rationally, is a series of mistakes. There are 36 images on a roll of film. You hope two or three are good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when I opened that box of black and white film and contact sheet in 2013, it was the first time I was truly able to be both photographer and editor. I reviewed frames I\u2019d forgotten I shot. I saw people I had lost track of. I spotted moments that were too raw or complex to make the cut at the time, but now felt urgent. It was like watching history with new eyes; sharper, slower, more honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your photos often contradicted what the Reagan administration was saying about El Salvador. What was it like being the counter-narrative?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the key word: Counter-narrative. What we were showing graphically contradicted what the Reagan administration was saying or testifying to at Congress, that the violence was reduced, that the economy was improving, that the Salvadoran military was reforming itself. And we were reporting and photographing the opposite. Death squads still existed. Morgues were full. Disappearances were still happening. We were also writing about that. And there was this contradiction that wasn\u2019t welcome in Washington. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, I was living in a house the Time<\/em> reporter, and I would tell him what I saw during the day either in the city or the countryside. And then he would write the story with his interviews and reporting and send it to editors in New York. So the contradictions would be built into the images and the text. And that, I think, ultimately had an effect. Not so much immediate, but eventually, the U.S. government realized that this war wasn\u2019t going to be won militarily. And they started putting pressure on the Salvadoran military to negotiate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was your relationship with the FMLN (The Farabundo Mart\u00ed National Liberation Front), and what was your experience like embedding with both the Salvadoran military and the guerrillas?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In early 1981, I spent two weeks with the guerrillas near the Salvadoran-Honduran border. After that trip, my meetings with the FMLN were spontaneous and  rarely for more than a few hours. It wasn\u2019t necessary to constantly spend a lot of time with the guerrillas if you were living in the capital, San Salvador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn\u2019t interested in glorifying or romanticizing the guerrillas. They were serious, they were committed. But there was also violence. There were a lot of people killed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also spent time with the Salvadoran Army \u2014 , which in some ways was easier because they had more resources. We had access to trucks and planes. I would follow trucks carrying coffins of Salvadoran soldiers back to their home villages. That kind of access gave me a much broader sense of the war. You can\u2019t just go to one side and expect to understand what\u2019s happening. That\u2019s why I tried to be on both sides\u2014to understand the totality of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The sister of a civil defenseman (center) faints upon hearing of the death of her brother during an overnight attack on the civil defense post in Santa Clara, El Salvador, in July 1982. Courtesy of Robert Nickelsberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What do you think photography can do that a written report can\u2019t? What is the power of the image?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, I think words are often more rigid than photographs, they require more time to get right. A photograph kind of interrupts that. It can be disturbing. It can be contradictory. That\u2019s where its power is. It\u2019s not linear. It\u2019s not something you can necessarily explain. But if it holds people for more than two or three seconds, if it draws them in and provokes a response, then they\u2019ll start asking questions. That\u2019s where I think the power of photography is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to be as accurate and credible as possible. That was always the starting point. I wasn\u2019t interested in creating sympathy or pushing an agenda. I just wanted people to ask: what\u2019s going on here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think visual storytelling still holds up in 2025?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, it does, although there\u2019s a lot more choice than before. And with that choice, you also have a shorter attention span. So for long-form journalism, which we all used to do up until maybe 2010, there\u2019s still appreciation, but it\u2019s a different game. There\u2019s a difference between doing daily work and doing investigative work. Not everyone can do investigative work properly. But stories still matter. The ability for someone to tell a good story, visually or otherwise, is still a priority for many. The appetite is there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it\u2019s sustainable is another question. Making a living at this is a real conundrum. It\u2019s not like before, when you could do an assignment, get paid, and buy gear or a plane ticket. Now, that money disappears fast. Grantsmanship and resourcefulness have become essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nayib<\/strong> Bukele recently put a stop to the El Mozote trial. Does it feel like the \u201clegacy of lies\u201d is persisting in El Salvador\u2019s present?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That didn\u2019t surprise me. Governments try to shut things down all the time. That\u2019s part of their toolbox. They deny, they distract, they change the narrative. But you can\u2019t erase a massacre. You can tear down a monument, you can attack a journalist, but the story remains. People remember. The community remembers. And there are still journalists doing the work, many of them in exile, some of them under surveillance. They\u2019re being tracked with spyware. Pegasus spyware has been used on Salvadoran journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, look at El Faro<\/em><\/a> [an internationally recognized digital news outlet founded in El Salvador]; those journalists are now mostly based outside the country. But even so, they\u2019re still asking questions. They\u2019re still trying to find accountability. The story doesn\u2019t disappear, it just shifts location. That\u2019s how I see it. There are always people who will dig. They may have to do it quietly, or from a distance, but they keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can a photograph convey about war and truth that perhaps written journalism or official reports cannot?<\/strong> And, maybe more urgently, does that power still hold in 2025?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want to sound ambivalent, but photography can force a response. You publish a photograph and the Salvadoran government might say, \u201cWell, we\u2019re going to investigate,\u201d even if they never actually do. You can pause an atrocity. You can shine a light on it. It\u2019s not activism. It\u2019s not charity. It\u2019s something else. It\u2019s revealing. That\u2019s what I believe in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can push back against a lie with something visual that has layers, that holds contradiction. And I\u2019m not keeping score; I\u2019m just trying to maintain a steady feed of what I think matters. I\u2019m not saying this one photograph stopped the violence, or this one gallery show changed policy. But you put it out into the world, and maybe it lands somewhere. Maybe it helps. I hope these images help people understand how we got here. Especially when it comes to something like the war in El Salvador and the migration that followed. That\u2019s not ancient history. That\u2019s now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gustavo Hernandez is a freelance photojournalist and videographer currently living in Excelsior District. He graduated in Fall 2024 with a double major in Journalism (Photojournalism) and BECA (Broadcasting and Electronic Communications Arts) from San Francisco State University. You can periodically catch him dodging potholes on his scooter and actively eating pho.More by Gustavo Hernandez<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nickelsberg will do a Q&A on his new book, \u2018Legacy of Lies: El Salvador 1981\u20131984,\u2019 at City College on April 24 by\u00a0GUSTAVO HERNANDEZ April 21, 2025 (MissionLocal.org) Help us reach 5,000 donors! We have an ambitious goal for 2025: Double the total number of donors from last year to over 5,000! We… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}