180 colour and black and white photographs taken by some of the most famous names in the history of photography, including Harry Callahan, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, whose work reveals a deep understanding of Mexico and its people.
Exhibition curators Carole Naggar and Fred Ritchin have selected work capable of revealing many of the icons profoundly rooted in Mexican culture.
It is undeniable that foreign artists and academics have been greatly influenced by their experiences in Mexico: many of them, known for a particular style, made profound changes to their work after going to Mexico.
Henri Cartier Bresson, the innovative French street photographer with a tendency toward surrealism (in Mexico in 1930), took on the almost realistic style of the photo reporter.
Paul Strand’s “Mexican Portofolio” might be considered his “spiritual jewel”.
The brief but intense photographic (and political) career of Italian Tina Modotti began in Mexico.
American master of fashion photography and portraits Edward Steichen worked strictly in black and white until he took his first colour photographs in Mexico. Helen Levitt, used to images of the streets of New York, travelled abroad to take photographs for the first and only time in 1941, to Mexico.
In more recent times, people such as Swedish child psychologist Kent Klich, American colourist Alex Webb and Iranian journalist Abbas have found much of the inspiration from their photographs in Mexico.
The exhibition also looks into the idea that the rigid dichotomies often present in western cultures – between past and present, body and soul, truth and fiction, art and life – do not apply in Mexico.
Linda Condor grasps the ephemeral line between past and present in dazzling images such as “Chichén Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (1976)”.
Ellen Auerbach expresses the same absence of separation in “Kneeling Christ, Huejotzingo, Mexico (1956)”.
The first photographs were taken in the 19th century by travellers to Mexico in the role of anthropologists or explorers: Carl Lumholtz’s portraits of the Tarahumara and Huichol tribes in the Sierra Madre in 1890 are among the most powerful photographs every taken of the country’s native peoples.
Sixty years later Gertrude Blom documented the dramatic situation of the Maya Lacandon as the jungle that had been their home since 200 AD was destroyed.
Other images of violence and death were produced by photojournalists such as François Aubert. His photograph of the Mexican Emperor Maximilian in his coffin presages the disturbing “Head of the dead man, Mexico City, 1990” by Joe Peter Witkin, showing a cut-off head on a tray covered with blood.
The political dramas of contemporary Mexico are documented in Robert Capa’s eloquent images of election campaigns and in the montages laden with political meaning of Ed van der Elsken (such as “Mexico, 160”).
MEXICO THROUGH FOREIGN EYES
Curators Carole Naggar and Fred Ritchin
180 colour and black and white photographs taken by some of the most famous names in the history of photography, including Harry Callahan, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, whose work reveals a deep understanding of Mexico and its people.
Exhibition curators Carole Naggar and Fred Ritchin have selected work capable of revealing many of the icons profoundly rooted in Mexican culture.
It is undeniable that foreign artists and academics have been greatly influenced by their experiences in Mexico: many of them, known for a particular style, made profound changes to their work after going to Mexico.
Henri Cartier Bresson, the innovative French street photographer with a tendency toward surrealism (in Mexico in 1930), took on the almost realistic style of the photo reporter.
Paul Strand’s “Mexican Portofolio” might be considered his “spiritual jewel”.
The brief but intense photographic (and political) career of Italian Tina Modotti began in Mexico.
American master of fashion photography and portraits Edward Steichen worked strictly in black and white until he took his first colour photographs in Mexico. Helen Levitt, used to images of the streets of New York, travelled abroad to take photographs for the first and only time in 1941, to Mexico.
In more recent times, people such as Swedish child psychologist Kent Klich, American colourist Alex Webb and Iranian journalist Abbas have found much of the inspiration from their photographs in Mexico.
The exhibition also looks into the idea that the rigid dichotomies often present in western cultures – between past and present, body and soul, truth and fiction, art and life – do not apply in Mexico.
Linda Condor grasps the ephemeral line between past and present in dazzling images such as “Chichén Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (1976)”.
Ellen Auerbach expresses the same absence of separation in “Kneeling Christ, Huejotzingo, Mexico (1956)”.
The first photographs were taken in the 19th century by travellers to Mexico in the role of anthropologists or explorers: Carl Lumholtz’s portraits of the Tarahumara and Huichol tribes in the Sierra Madre in 1890 are among the most powerful photographs every taken of the country’s native peoples.
Sixty years later Gertrude Blom documented the dramatic situation of the Maya Lacandon as the jungle that had been their home since 200 AD was destroyed.
Other images of violence and death were produced by photojournalists such as François Aubert. His photograph of the Mexican Emperor Maximilian in his coffin presages the disturbing “Head of the dead man, Mexico City, 1990” by Joe Peter Witkin, showing a cut-off head on a tray covered with blood.
The political dramas of contemporary Mexico are documented in Robert Capa’s eloquent images of election campaigns and in the montages laden with political meaning of Ed van der Elsken (such as “Mexico, 160”).