What to do with bad photographs?

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit a performance of Mexico City’s Folkloric Ballet Sunday morning.  I packed my camera to record the event, to help me remember the experience, but I was prepared for disappointment. My camera is a poor tool for this kind of work and the results were true to my expectations.  Most of the photographs were out of focus, the colors were distorted, and although I could improve compositions by cropping, a lot of things I couldn’t fix.

So, I decided to goof around with the photographs, altering them freely. Here’s a sampling:

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Reader, what is your opinion of manipulating photos this way?  What do you do when photos have so many problems that standard solutions don’t help?  Do photographs altered this way help preserve memories or provide a real record of events?

Underwater Museum (MUSA), Isla Mujeres, MX

The process and evolution of the underwater installation off the coast of Isla Mujeres, Mexico, created by British sculptor and diver, Jason deCaires Taylor.

More than 400 hand crafted sculptures stand on the ocean floor and depict everyday people going about their normal lives. Men, women, children are all present, all frozen in time. The installation, part of an environmental conservation project, is constructed as an artifical reef; corals grow and marine creatures feed, continuing the life cycle.

Jason de Caires Taylor’s underwater sculptures create a unique, absorbing and expansive visual seascape. Highlighting natural ecological processes Taylor’s interventions explore the intricate relationships that exist between art and environment. His works become artificial reefs, attracting marine life, while offering the viewer privileged temporal encounters, as the shifting sand of the ocean floor, and the works change from moment to moment. – Formele Capricioase ale Artei

Taylor’s website:  http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

Related articles

• Cancun’s Underwater Museum (aquaworldcancun.wordpress.com)

Beautiful books: Saltillo sarapes

Saltillo sarape, note the Mexican flags used as decorative motifs in the rhombus.

One of the great textile traditions of the world, the magnificent Saltillo sarapes of Mexico have been a symbol of wealth, prestige and rugged individualism for over 250 years. In the second half of the 19th century, beginning with the reign of Mexican Emperor Maximilian, the Saltillo enjoyed a final flowering of artistic achievement.

Sarape Museum in Saltillo, Mexico

The McCormick Gallery in Chicago, Illinois has recently published a comprehensive book on the subject featuring essays by Mark Winter and Thomas McCormick. Winter is the foremost authority on Saltillo Sarapes and McCormick has collected these textiles for 35 years.

Related:

From Smithsonian magazine, click here to read:  The Sarape: Latin America’s Wrap for All Seasons | Articulations.

From the McCormick Gallery

Saltillo Sarape, A survey: 1850-1920 by Mark Winter and Tom McCormick

Previously published work on the Saltillo sarape has primarily concentrated on those textiles classified as Classic, that is to say, weavings produced from the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. This is certainly understandable as these world-class weavings are among the most magnificent ever produced in any culture. They have always been costly, a sign of wealth and privilege, and they are rare and expensive to collect today. Mark Winter, the foremost authority on the topic, has written insightfully in his essay about the history and development of the Classic Saltillo sarape.

However, Saltillo sarapes woven in the post-classic period, after 1850 and up to the decline of the indigenous Mexican weaving industry in the early twentieth century, have received considerably less attention. This represents a seventy-five year period in which superb examples were produced with an expanded canon of design concepts and the benefit of newly available dyes and yarns. This was also an era of growing nationalism, when the sarape became a symbol of Mexican pride. Tom Mccormick provides new insight on the weavings of this period.

The book, with 112 pages featuring over 100 color illustrations, is available through the gallery or by visiting www.saltillosarape.com.

Fantastic creatures parade through Mexico City

Saturday, October 22 at 12 noon
5th Annual Parade and Competition of
Monumental Alebrijes (Monumental Fantastic Creatures)

The parade will begin in the Zócalo and continue down 5 de Mayo, Juárez and Paseo de la Reforma avenues until reaching the Angel de la Independence Monument.

After the parade, competitor’s “creatures” will be on exhibit through Sunday, November 6 on the main sidewalks of Paseo de la Reforma, between the Angel de la Independencia monument and Diana Cazadora monument.

Watch portions of the parade here:

Stream videos at Ustream

Related: 

Information about alebrijes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alebrije

Humor: Day of the Dead debacle

Calavera de la Catrina ("La Catrina"), José Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913)

Hi, everyone!

The Mountain Room is gearing up for its Day of the Dead celebration on Friday. Please send in photos of loved ones for our altar. All parents are welcome to come by on Wednesday afternoon to help us make candles and decorate skulls.

Thanks!

Emily

What begins as a seemingly harmless celebration of Day of the Dead in an American pre-school takes some unusual turns as parents and children get involved.  Maria Semple, writing for the New Yorker, takes a humorous look at what can happen, chronicling events in this series of e-mails between a pre-school teacher and parents.

To read the article in the New Yorker’s humor section, Shouts and Murmurs, click here:  Day of the Dead or Halloween? : The New Yorker.

Information about: the graphic cartoon of José Guadalupe Posada:

Posada’s posters and political cartoons depicted members of every social class as calaveras (mischievous skeletons).  La Catrina, the “Calavera of the Female Dandy”, satirizes the life of the upper classes during the reign of Porfirio Diaz.  The humor of the device made his scathing political satire more acceptable.

Well-recognized and enjoyed in its day, Posada’s work gradually faded from popular memory until shortly after the Mexican Revolution.  In the 1920s his work was revived by French artist and art historian Jean Charlot and La Catrina, gaining iconic status as a symbol of uniquely Mexican art, was mass-produced for the public.  When Diego Rivera painted the mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda central, he painted himself as a boy holding hands with his depiction of Posada’s Catrina.

Today, José Guadalupe Posada’s work is synonymous with the lively Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.

Related articles

• ‘Day of the Dead’ expanding in US (boston.com)

Cervante’s Festival of the Arts

Finnish Virpi Pahkinen, performs Aajej (nordic wind) experimental ballet

October 15 through November 2 – Michoacán, MX

The Festival Internacional Cervantino is one of the most outstanding cultural events in Latin America. The event draws tens of thousands of Mexicans and tourists to attend plays, concerts, symposia, dance performances and films.

More than 2,800 artists from 29 countries perform; special invited performance artists represent Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Nayarit.  This year’s theme, The Gifts of Nature, is dedicated to the environment.

Background on the festival (FIC) in Guanajuato:  http://www.guanajuato.gob.mx/ingles/FIC.htm

Festival Internacional Cervantino (FIC) official site (in Spanish):  http://www.festivalcervantino.gob.mx/

The Mexican Sombrero, one heavy thing

From Eleven Heavy Things, (sculpture and photo opportunity) 2009 by Miranda July

The exhibition, Eleven Heavy Things by artist, filmmaker, and writer Miranda July featuring a series of 11 sculptures that encourage viewer interaction is now in the Melrose Wave Park at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.  The work was first exhibited in a garden within Giardino delle Vergini for the 53rd International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2009, and at Union Square Park in New York in 2010.

Related articles

Pictures of other heavy things at this site:

• Eleven Heavy Things by Miranda July (design-milk.com)

Tina Modotti (1896 – 1942)

Mexican peasants reading El Machete, 1928

Italian born Tina Modotti was one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century. She was a photographer, model, actress, revolutionary political activist and spy.  She became famous as a result of the photographs she created in Mexico in the 1920s and her involvement in the avant garde and revolutionary movements of her time.

Glasses, platinum print from orig. negative, c. 1924

Her photographs and life offer a unique look at the events in Mexico in the 1920s, when painters like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were alive and many intellectuals from many countries came together.  She was the photographer of choice among the muralists and helped document the work of Orozco and Rivera. In 1927 she joined the Mexican Communist Party. Between 1923 and 1930 she created a collection of sepia-tinted portraits of Mexican workers and expatriate revolutionaries that are intimate and real.  As she became more political in her life, so she increasingly devoted herself to social documentation. In 1929, she photographed the women of Tehuantepec, a series that was to become famous.

Tina Moldotti

Her personal life was dramatic and turbulent.  She was Edward Weston’s mistress and model in Mexico and learned the craft of photography from him; his influence is visible in her early work.  In 1929 her lover, Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, was shot and killed while at her side and Modotti was accused of  his assassination.  In 1930, she was arrested as an enemy of the state and forced to leave the country.  She lived in exile in Europe and made her way to Spain during its civil war.  After the collapse of the Spanish Republican government in 1939 she returned to Mexico.  In 1942, during a taxi ride she suffered a heart attack and died at age 45.  Rumors surrounding her death have never been confirmed.

By some, Tina Modotti is seen as the heroine of the workers’ movement, by others as a classical femme fatale. Still others consider her a kind of ‘Joan of Arc with a camera…. – Reinhard Schultz, Curator of Galerie Bilderwelt Berlin

Tina Moditti website:  http://www.modotti.com/

Although her work is scarce, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City has a good collection:  http://moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4039

Anne Menke, fashion photographer

Trunk magazine's 2011 debut issue

Trunk magazine's 2011 debut issue; photographs by Modotti (left) and Menke.

Anne Menke found inspiration for these photographs in another European photographer who made Mexico her home, Italian Tina Modotti.

Fashion magazines are rarely a part of my budget, but after spotting Anne Menke’s work, I might have to change my habits.

Mini-bio from Wikipedia:  Anne Menke was born in March 26, 1967 in Germany.  In 1987, she finished her apprenticeship in Germany and worked as an assistant in Dusseldorf for 2 years. She opened up her own studio, then moved to Paris in 1991 and worked on her own in fashion and advertising all around the world.  In 1995, she moved to New York City where she lived for several years before moving to Mexico.

She lives now between Mexico and NYC and travels the rest of the world for her shoots.

  

Photographs by Anne Menke, Myself magazine, France, May 2011 (source: http://mesfavoritethings.blogspot.com/search?q=mexic)

Slideshow of photographs (from 2011 Elle, Myself, Vogue, and Trunk magazines):

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Anne Menke is represented by Serlin Associates (everywhere but in Germany):  http://www.serlinassociates.com/#/annemenke

Trunk magazine’s website:  http://www.trunkmag.com/

Vértigo Galería celebrates

Inauguration TZOMPANTLI GRÁFICO – October 13, 8PM in Vértigo Galería

Tzompantli Gráfico is a collective exhibition featuring the work of over 50 Mexican and international artists associated with graphic art in diverse fields including illustration, graffiti, comics, design and contemporary art.  The collective, organized by Vértigo Galería and 1000Changos - graphic illustrator, celebrates the gallery’s second anniversary.

Each artist’s creative contribution to the exhibition will express his/her conception of death, culminating in a fascinating mosaic of images, concepts and designs.

Vértigo Galería

Colima 23 Loc. A, Colonia Roma, Mexico DF

www.vertigogaleria.com

Vocabulary

Tzompantli, from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, refers to a row or wall made of skulls, typically from war captives or people who were offered to god’s as sacrifice in Pre-hispanic culture.   The heads, still bleeding, were placed one after the other on wooden stakes to create the wall.

         

Skeletons and skulls are very prevalent in Mexican culture, art and design and an important part of Day of the Dead celebrations.  Is there a difference in symbolism when they form part of a wall versus when shown individually?