The Gaze of 45 Mexican Photographers
Sponsors: Hubei Museum of Art, Guangdong Museum of Art
Co-organizer: Hubei Changjiang Publishing Group
Curators: Francisco Mata, Pedro Meyer, Wang Huangsheng
Opening Ceremony: 2008.3.18(Tuesday), 10:00am
Opening Venue: Hubei Museum of Art, 1F Public Hall
Exhibition Dates: 2008.3.18--2008.4.21
Exhibition Venue: Hubei Museum of Art, No.1 Exhibition Hall
Introduction: The exhibition The Gaze of 45 Mexican Photographers presents for the first time in history, a representative selection of Mexican photographers in China. The exhibition being possible thanks to the support of the Pedro Meyer Foundation, being this, the organization’s first project, under the curatorship of Pedro Meyer and Francisco Mata. The show reflects the diversity of thought and vision with which images are produced now in Mexico.
Foreword
The Gaze of 45 Mexican Photographers
Pedro Meyer
Curator
Founder and President of the Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía
This exhibition is surely the largest exhibition of Mexican photography ever presented in China. Yet it covers only a small segment of all the photographers that we have in our country. We made this selection of images and photographers in this exhibition according to certain parameters. As always, such decisions are not made easily and obviously carry the responsibility of subjective choices.
My co-curator Francisco Mata and myself, have attempted to provide a fairly balanced representation according to the geographic diversity in our country, so we have photographers who are from the north and others from the south, as well as from the east and the western parts of the nation.
We were careful to invite both more established as well as younger photographers, and lastly we sought a distribution of gender as one of the more important considerations to keep in mind. As if that was not enough of a puzzle to resolve, we also had to deal with a diversity of content. Both more avant-garde work as well as traditional imagery. Work whose base is solely digital, and others whose initial life started in the analog era. Pictures that are taken both in Mexico or in China. Pictures of people at war, and social struggles and people going about their religious beliefs. We have attempted to show Mexico’s past and ancient historical background as well as offering a look at the megalopolis of Mexico City with some of the problems of urban development in the twenty first century or the jails that come along in the process of a society trying to cope with social problems.
These are pictures that are both informative as well as aesthetically important, they also represent the evolution of digital technologies and thus the enormous changes that photography has undergone all over the world.
Mexico as you surely know, is one of those spaces on earth that are blessed with having been a magnet for photographers ever since the invention of photography. Not many places in the world have been as thoroughly photographed by the top photographers in the world as has been the case of Mexico. Just as silk and tea were some of the main attractions for merchants from all over the world, trying to find their way to China. Mexico had it’s indigenous past as a source of attraction for photographers from all over the world.
As Mexico became a magnet for photographers from abroad, it also was a magnet for our own photographers to explore some of these same subjects, only with a different perspective in mind, one which was steeped in a closer understanding of the local customs and culture.
I am making a point here in not making a reference to all the great artists that came to Mexico, usually associated with essays such as this one, because they are mostly western names, and it is time we diversify our knowledge of photographers from other parts of the world.
Just because in the recent past of photographic history the power centers for photography remained in the United States, France and England, it does not suggest that in reality the only photographers that were either great or important came only from that region. It used to be that for a local photographer to be recognized, it required that these traditional power centers offer their blessing of approval. All of that is fortunately changing. A perfect example is this new bridge between China and Mexico without the need to go through the historic channels that would be the historic intermediaries.
As the world has become digital, one of the things that began taking place is that publishing was no longer left solely to these traditional power centers of photography. Today anyone who wants to, can publish their work over the internet and distribute it world wide. With such an opening we are becoming increasingly aware how broad and large the base of great photography really is. This exhibition makes that point to some degree, the sophistication present in the work of these Mexican photographers does not take any back-seat to photography from other parts of the world.
Throughout Mexico, there is a saying that makes reference to matters when they are very complex and difficult to understand, “esto está en chino”. The transliteration of that is: “that is in Chinese”. As part of our culture, if something is difficult to grasp we say “this is in Chinese”.
What for me has been “in Chinese” is trying to find a good answer to why I find China to be emotionally so close to our “Mexican sensibility”. Both countries are of course what one considers “old cultures”, yet our languages are worlds apart. During recent trips we made to China, when my partner and I attempted to communicate with any Chinese people whom we were photographing (and us not speaking Chinese) they would always “understand our gestures” better when we spoke to them in Spanish as when we did so in English.
Then we observed how people reacted and went about in their daily chores in China and invariably we were very surprised to discover over and over again, how much we could see our own culture reflected in all that we were witnessing in China.
Of course I appreciate the subjective nature of such an observation, but isn’t that what a photographer brings to the encounter when visiting a distant culture? One could also ask the argument in reverse, what happens when Chinese people come in contact with Mexican pictures? I would hope that this personal experience of seeing your own culture reflected in the eyes of our people, would have the same effect as it did on my partner and me, when we visited this great country of yours.
We certainly want to express our deep gratitude for the invitation to present our images at this fine museum, and only hope that the bridge which we are building today will be used and crossed by many more generations of photographers going in both directions.
Images of Mexico in China
Alejandro Castellanos
General Director
Centro de la Imagen
The exhibition The Gaze of 45 Mexican Photographers presents for the first time in history, a representative selection of Mexican photographers in China. The exhibition being possible thanks to the support of the Pedro Meyer Foundation, being this, the organization’s first project, under the curatorship of Pedro Meyer and Francisco Mata. The show reflects the diversity of thought and vision with which images are produced now in Mexico.reflects the diversity of thought and vision with which images are produced now in Mexico.
Up until now, there has been few intersecting points between the Asian photographic tradition and that which is practiced in Latin America; this region was once described by the diplomat and political scientist Alain Rouquié as the extreme west, referring to its close ties with Western culture, but also to its position, at once peripheral and strategic, from which it has been able to engage in exchanges with other cultures; such as the Asian culture, specifically in countries such as Peru and Brazil, or cities such as Mexicali, in the northern region of Mexico. These settlements of Asian population in Latin America have notably enriched the culture and imagination of our countries, reminding us somehow, that the first settlers in our continent came precisely from the Orient.
In The Gaze of 45 Mexican Photographers, Francisco Mata and Pedro Meyer have structured an encompassing vision that allows us to better understand the ways in which photography reflects the deep social and cultural changes through which Mexico is going through at the beginning of the 21st Century.
Through the plurality of perspectives with which the Mexican photographers perceive the world, it is possible to identify multiple dimensions of reality, not necessarily dependant on a specific geographic context, but rather that of the author that imagines and creates from a specific place.
Pedro Meyer’s prestige as a visionary that has widened the horizons for Latin American photography, is well known. His work as President of the Mexican Council of Photography, entity from which he organized the first two colloquiums of Latin American Photography in 1978 and 1982, and later as director of zonezero.com, has been crucial so that the work of numerous photographers from around the world, but specifically from Mexico and Latin America, gain visibility. On the other hand, Francisco Mata is one of the most well known Mexican photographers today. His roles as an editor and collaborator of various projects have gifted him with noteworthy experience in the construction of iconographic discourses with his and other’s images.
El Centro de la Imagen, collaborates in this project with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to help support the invitation of 5 photographers to visit China and attend the exhibition. El Centro de la Imagen was delighted to be host during the visit of Dr. Wang Huangsheng, Director of Guangdong Museum of Art, to Mexico. We thus celebrate the beginning of this new route promotion of Mexican photography, with a project, that without a doubt will become a reference for future exchanges in the field of photography between Mexico and China.
WORKS:
