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Edouard Boubat - Fête des Morts, Mexique (Day of the Dead, Mexico)
Edouard Boubat
Fête des Morts, Mexique (Day of the Dead, Mexico)
$1,500
W. VanKirk Buchanan - The Ancient Art of Brick Making, Mexico City, Mexico
W. VanKirk Buchanan
The Ancient Art of Brick Making, Mexico City, Mexico
$400
Henri Cartier-Bresson - Mexico City, Mexico
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Mexico City, Mexico
$12,000
Harry Crosby - Farmer in Market, Guanjuato, Mexico
Harry Crosby
Farmer in Market, Guanjuato, Mexico
$350
Dick Davis - Mayan School Children, Yucatan, Mexico
Dick Davis
Mayan School Children, Yucatan, Mexico
$400
Carl Frank - Mexican Folk Dancing
Carl Frank
Mexican Folk Dancing
$400
George W. Gardner - Indian Girl and Brother, San Christobal, Las Casas, Chiapos, Mexico
George W. Gardner
Indian Girl and Brother, San Christobal, Las Casas, Chiapos, Mexico
$1,500
F. Bedrich Grünzweig - Beggar outside a Cathedral, Mexico City
F. Bedrich Grünzweig
Beggar outside a Cathedral, Mexico City
$2,000
F. Bedrich Grünzweig - School, Guenavaca, Mexico
F. Bedrich Grünzweig
School, Guenavaca, Mexico
$650
Llewellyn R. Lewis - A Mexican Scene
Llewellyn R. Lewis
A Mexican Scene
$250
John Lewis Stage - Black Pottery of Oaxaca, San Bartolo Coyotepec, Mexico
John Lewis Stage
Black Pottery of Oaxaca, San Bartolo Coyotepec, Mexico
$400
Pierre Verger - San Francisco el Alto, Mexico
Pierre Verger
San Francisco el Alto, Mexico
$1,250
By Matt Damsker
George W. Gardner--Indian Girl and Brother, San Christobal, Las Casas, Chiapos, Mexico
W. VanKirk Buchanan--The Ancient Art of Brick Making, Mexico City, Mexico

More than anything, Mexico is its people--stewards and survivors of a harsh, sun-raked land who energize their desert with unmistakeable culture and character. The majority of images in this exhibit reflect exactly that, for they mainly depict a people of the sun, captured in rich, contrasting studies of light and shade, in dramatic silhouette, and in the full glare of the day. The Mexico of these photos is a crucible in which the young, the old, the well-possessed and the poor enact an unselfconscious theater of daily life, challenged and ennobled by the simple imperatives of living.

This is most evident in the photos of Pierre Verger. The Paris-born Verger (1902-1966) was as great an ethnographer as he was a photographer, having devoted most of his life to the study of Third World culture, the African Diaspora and the disappearing civilizations of Earth's far corners. In the 1930s, among many such destinations, he visited Mexico, chronicling its humanity in a series of superb, candid portraits that express the joy and struggle of Mexican life as few photographers have done.

In their luminous black and white, Verger's images get all the color of Mexico--the children of Oaxaca at play in their traditional garb, the old potters of Oaxaca, as weathered as their clay, the tribal dancers of Huachinango, the men mending hats or the women selling tortillas, all taking the shade as they labor cheerfully. Verger's Mexico is less a land of poverty and pathos than a world of work and carefully conserved energy--an energy that flares in the smiles of youth or the animated expressions of blind musicians singing and strumming in the open air.

George W. Gardner--Indian Girl and Brother, San Christobal, Las Casas, Chiapos, Mexico
George W. Gardner--Indian Girl and Brother, San Christobal, Las Casas, Chiapos, Mexico

In Verger's and most of the other photos of this exhibit, the pure power of available-light photography delineates and defines the Mexican landscape as something post-Eden, naked in the eyes of God, and marked for redemption. The children in the thatch-roofed shade of a Yucatan schoolhouse, the cowboys herding ponies in Guadalajara, or the oxcart drivers fording a river under a magnificent dusky sky in Fritz Henle's heroic 1960s photo are all figures of hope and forward motion. At the same time, there is innocence and repose in Henle's almost biblical depiction of a boy with a baby lamb, and there is the scruffy indolence of youth in a Merida pool hall in Carl Frank's photo, one of the few indoor shots here.

Of course, in Flor Gardino's 2006 series--"The Sonnets of Shakespeare"--voluptuous female nudes are posed mysteriously with great organic props. These studio productions by one of Mexico's leading artists explore the sensual and the sublime on their own terms, via searing platinum prints and a metaphysical formalism that connects no less to the Mexican earth than do the naturalistic photos elsewhere in this exhibit. Gardino reminds us that as real as it may be beneath the sun, Mexico is also very much a state of mind.

20th-Century Mexico in Photographs
About This Exhibit
Image List

Exhibited and Sold By
Contemporary Works / Vintage Works, Ltd.

258 Inverness Circle
Chalfont, Pennsylvania   18914   USA

Contact Alex Novak and Marthe Smith

Email info@vintageworks.net

Phone +1-215-518-6962

Call for an Appointment

 

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