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?

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.

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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/

The Virgen of Guadalupe and her pilgrims

The Road to Tepeyac, photographs by Alinka Echeverria

The Road to Tepeyac is a photographic typology of the backs of 300 Mexican Catholic pilgrims bearing treasures to be blessed on their journey to the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City.  The pilgrimage, undertaken by millions each year, takes place on December 12. This day is the anniversary of the five apparitions of the Virgin to the indigenous man Juan Diego on Tepeyac hill, which occurred in 1531 near the sacred place of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin.

The Basilica is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world, after St. Peter’s in Rome. In 2008, over 6 million made the pilgrimage, in 2009, 6.1 million visited La Villa. (The site of the apparition and surrounding area is often referred to as La Villa de Guadalupe or simply, La Villa).  

In an interview with Time magazine, Echeverria said,

It is incredible that about six million people walk for up to ten days to reach the Basilica to pay homage to the Virgin on the anniversary of her apparitions and then sleep in the big square in front of the Basilica to sing ‘happy birthday’ to her at 5am. The event is an incredible mixture of serenity and chaos.

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Born in 1981 in Mexico, Echeverria is currently based in Paris. She was named 2011 winner of the HSBC Prize for Photography, an annual prize given by the HSBC Cultural Foundation of France. The Road to Tepeyac is currently on exhibition at L’Aresenale in Metz, France through 30 October, part of a tour of the HSBC 2011 award recipients.

Visit Echeverria’s web site:  http://www.alinkaecheverria.com/

From Time magazine:  Alinka Echeverria: The Road to Tepeyac – LightBox.

Mexico City, in a constant state of flux and reinvention

If Mexico City is a book, then it’s one that’s constantly being rewritten.

For the photographer Brian Rosa, Mexico City is in a constant state of flux and reinvention – never completely finished; never completely reinvented.

He photographed Mexico City during a research fellowship prior to the national Centennial Celebration in 2010 and saw a discrepancy between “the rigid central planning and the chaos of informal settlements…”.  He “ended up trying to reconcile these two conflicting histories…”  The result was a series Rosa titled: Palimpsesto Urbano: Mexico City (Urban palimpsest); it is not a comprehensive visual catalog of the city but calls attention to the city’s constant state of evolution.

To live in Mexico City is to cross countless invisible borders every day; to be constantly barraged with all things-beautiful and ugly, banal, and remarkable-that this world has to offer. – Brian Rosa

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(See this complete series and other work by Rosa on his site: http://brianrosa.net/ ).

Vocabulary:  Palimpsest/Palimpsesto

Decipherment in architecture

Architects imply palimpsest as a ghost—an image of what once was. In the built environment, this occurs somewhat often. Whenever spaces are shuffled, rebuilt, or remodeled, shadows remain. Tarred rooflines remain on the sides of a building long after the neighboring structure has been demolished; removed stairs leave a mark where the painted wall surface stopped. Dust lines remain from a relocated appliance. Ancient ruins speak volumes of their former wholeness. Palimpsests can inform us, archaeologically, of the realities of the built past.

Thus architects, archaeologists and design historians sometimes use the word to describe the accumulated iterations of a design or a site, whether in literal layers of archaeological remains, or by the figurative accumulation and reinforcement of design ideas over time.

Where in your neighborhood or city do you find palimpsests, shadows of the past?

Villalba’s photographs, paintings in Mexico City

Dario Villalba at Luis Adelantado Gallery

Dario Villalba

Gallery Luis Adelantado    September 24th – November 18

The Gallery Luis Adelantado is presenting, for the first time in Mexico, Spanish artist Dario Villalba.

Villalba, considered one of the greatest and most influential Spanish artists in the last decades, is a reference in Spanish contemporary art for his pioneering use of photography and painting and his constant dialogue with artistic youth. Beginning in the middle of the 1960s he integrated photography, canvas and paint to make unique works that defied classification in modern and contemporary vanguard art movements.  He uses photographs for transmitting attitudes or states of mind.  Over time his process has become progressively more complicated, expressing formal self-analysis and introspection.

For this show, Villalba has selected some of his most significant pieces of work, including big format canvases. In a way it’s a “mental portrait” of the artist, a retrospective exhibition that shows the coherence and interest of a long and fruitful life dedicated to artistic creation, creating “a now, an all, a self-portrait”.

Villalba’s works are held in the collections of many important museums:  Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Louvre, Paris; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of the Vatican, Rome, and many others. Dario Villalba is an elected member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Madrid and was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts by the King of Spain.

Dario Villalba’s webpage: http://www.dariovillalba.com/

Gallery hours: Monday through Friday 10:00 – 14:00; 15:00-19:00 and Saturday from 10:00 to 14:00

Address: Laguna de Terminos 26 (Between Lago Iseo and Mariano Escobedo), Colonia Anahauc

Telephone: 5545.6645/5545.6631

Luis Adelantado, with galleries in Miami and Valencia, opened his Mexico City gallery in 2010:  http://www.luisadelantadovalencia.com/prensa/general/elle.pdf  (in Spanish)

More information on Dario Villalba

To coincide with the exhibition in Madrid, an anthology was published and is available through major booksellers:

Dario Villalba: Una Vision Antologica 1957-2007,  by Maria Luisa Martin de Argila, essay by Francisco Calvo Serraller and additional text by Miguel Fernandez Cid.

A monograph on Villalba’s work and artistic trajectory, it includes a complete documentary appendix:  biography, artistic chronology and  bibliography.

The Travel Photographer

A great blog.

Photojournalism Workshop by David Lida

Frame your own story...

David Lida, photojournalist for over 20 years, is offering a photography workshop next month.  The goal of the course is to teach participants techniques to create an urban chronicle.  It will include lectures, hands-on workshops (taking camera to the street), and work revision in the classroom.  The cost is M$1,500.

“During the first class, on October 1, I’ll cast my pearls of wisdom about the kind of street story I tend to write. Then there will be a two-day break in which each student will be sent out in the street to put together a short piece. In the following two classes, on October 4 and 5, we discuss the work submitted.”

Dates and times:

• Saturday, October 1 from 11:00 to 14:00
• Tuesday, October 4 and Wednesday, October 5 from 18:00 to 21:00.

To sign up, contact:

Taller Arteluz

Yucatan 99 Altos

Colonia Roma Norte

Telephone:  5574.8844

E-mail:  arteluztaller@gmail.com

David Lida is the author of Las llaves de la ciudad: Un mosaico de México/The Keys to the City: A Mexican Mosaic and First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, Capital of the 21st Century, among other books. His blog is Mostly Mexico by David Lida.

Mexico City, Fera Maldonada

I am always looking for good photographs of Mexico City and I’d like to share two by a young photographer here in the city, Fera Maldonada.  You can view more of her work on Behance Network: a creative professional platform, http://www.behance.net/lafera. She maintains a blog where she posts more of her photographs:  laferafoto.blogspot.com