ARTS & COLLECTIBLES

MEXICO'S LANDSCAPE

Woman photographers have played an important role in the development and history of Mexican photography. Experience 20th-century Mexico’s shifting national identity though landscapes, portraits, and more through the eyes of these of those who lived, explored, and made art there could do in Phoenix Art Museum’s current exhibition - Mexican Photographers, Mexican Views.

JESSICA HALL

Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903-1993) is considered one of Mexico’s most important photographers. She is known for her documentation of Mexico’s people, cities, and villages and often eschewed models and staged situations, instead preferring to photograph her subjects during informal moments of everyday life - at work, in the marketplace, in restaurants, and at leisure.

Flor Garduño (b. 1957) photographs the landscapes of Central and South America and the peoples whose ancestors were indigenous to those regions. She blends nature and art through her photographs, and today, she is best known for her haunting images of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, her symbolic nudes, and her still-life compositions.

Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942) reveals the daily lives, customs, and rituals of Mexica’s indigenous contrast through her photographs. Her high-contrast, black-and-white prints convey the starkness of life for many of her subjects and attempt to understand Mexico in its totality.

Colette Álvarez Urbajtel (b. 1934) is a French-Mexican photographer who documents everyday life. Her tight compositions of tranquil scenes often depict plant, animals, insects, and her family.

Mariana Yampolsky (1925-2002) was born in the United States but became a Mexican citizen in 1954. Considered one of the major figures of 20th-century Mexican photography, she is best known for her work documenting the beauty and desolation of Mexican culture through images of everyday life in the country’s rural areas.