Aperture Foundationannounce Paul Strand in Mexico, an exhibition comprised of over a hundred photographic works by Strand, including vintage prints; stills from his classic film, Redes (The Wave; 1936); and previously unseen documents and ephemera related to Strand’s time in Mexico.
The exhibition, a unique and important photographic portrait of Mexico at a critical point in its history by one of the great modern masters, will open at Aperture Gallery on September 9, 2010, to coincide with the celebrations commemorating the bicentennial of Mexico’s Independence (1810) and the centennial of its Revolution (1910). An opening reception for the public will take place the following week, on Thursday, September 16, 6:00–8:00 p.m., marking the official start date of the Mexican Revolution.
A satellite exhibition featuring twenty gravure prints from the 1967 edition of The Mexican Portfolio will open simultaneously at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, accompanied by a family program to engage the local community with Strand’s photographs.
The book Paul Strand in Mexico, copublished by Aperture and Televisa Foundation in October 2010, accompanies the exhibition. This lush and exquisitely printed volume documents the complete photographic works made by Strand during his 1932–34 trip to Mexico as well as a second journey in 1966—a total of 234 photographs, 123 of which have never before been published. The first publication to chronicle this pivotal time in Strand’s career, Paul Strand in Mexico demonstrates how, through his photographic studies and work in film, Strand sought to create a visual record of the place, chronicling what he thought of as the country’s essential characteristics.
Author James Krippner’s in-depth, scholarly text brings together primary research from distinguished archives and institutions in both Mexico and the United States, and Mexican photo-historian Alfonso Morales contributes an essay contextualizing this remarkable body of work within the canon of Mexican photography and film of the 1930s. The book features additional texts by Katherine Ware, Leo Hurwitz, David Alfaro Siqueros, and Anthony Montoya. The culmination of Strand’s time in Mexico was his collaboration with Emilio Gomez Muriel and Academy Award-winning director Fred Zinnemann on the groundbreaking film, Redes (The Waves, 1936); a restored DVD version of the film is included with this essential volume.
Strand first visited Mexico in 1932 at the invitation of Carlos Chavez, the eminent Mexican composer and conductor, having developed a fervent commitment to “straight photography”—photographs intended to capture life realistically and objectively, without manipulation. He was eager to put his beliefs into practice in Mexico, then a country undergoing profound cultural and political change. Strand’s sojourn in Mexico, during which he not only produced his own work but was also appointed the Director of the Department of Photography and Film by the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education, was a time of great creative renewal for the artist—one of intense productivity, and the development of a method of working that would become the foundation of his subsequent endeavors: collective portraits of other lands. Through his extensive travels through Mexico’s rural areas, Strand assembled the startling portraits of rural Mexican men, woman, and children that form the heart of the book and exhibition, along with breathtaking landscapes, baroque churches, and photographs of religious iconography.
Paul Strand (born 1890, New York; died 1976, Orgeval, France) was one of the great photographers of the twentieth century. As a youth, he studied under Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, going on to draw acclaim from such illustrious sources as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. After World War II, Strand traveled around the world—from New England to Ghana, France to the Outer Hebrides—to photograph, and in the process created a dynamic and significant body of work. During the 1970s, major exhibitions of his work were displayed internationally, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest American photographers.
Paul Strand in Mexico has been made possible by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CONACULTA), Mexico; the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Generations of Artistic Genius; the Tinker Foundation; The John B. Hurford ’60 Humanities Center at Haverford College; and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York. Additional support is provided by Geoffrey Gund through the Aperture Fund for Classics, and Paul Pincus and Roddy Gonsalves.
James Krippner is an associate professor of history at Haverford College. He is a scholar of Hispanic studies specializing in visual culture, and is the author of Rereading the Conquest: Power, Politics, and the History of Early Colonial Michoacán, Mexico, 1521–1565 (2001).
Alfonso Morales (essay) is a historian and editor of the Centro de la Imagen’s leading photography publication, Luna Córnea.
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
Between 10th and 11th Avenues
New York, New York
www.aperture.org
