101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides @Aperture

JTF (just the facts): A total of 80 black and white and color photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung in the divided gallery space and the book alcove. All of the works on view are modern prints, made from negatives taken between 1948 and 1995. 60 are gelatin silver prints, 18 are c-prints, and 2 are extra large mural style prints on adhesive vinyl. Physical dimensions for the framed prints are either 11x14 or 16x20 and all of the prints are available in editions of 15. The show also includes 1 video, 1 glass case with a selection of 9 newspaper spreads, and 1 set of 10 unframed c-prints (with accompanying bag) made between 2009 and 2011 and displayed in the book alcove. The show was curated by Trisha Ziff. A monograph of this body was recently published by Aperture (here) and is available in the bookshop for $50. (Installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: The Mexico City tabloid pictures of Enrique Metinides are the most consistently astonishing and impressive photographs I have seen all year. Spanning more than 50 years and gathering together the artist's greatest hits and favorites, this show delivers a parade of excellence without pause - there isn't a boring, forgettable image in this entire joyous exhibit. I choose the word joyous with significant care in this case, as it isn't exactly obvious to think that a series of gruesome, voyeuristic images of corpses, car crashes, and grisly accidents could be as well-crafted, lively and empathetic as these photographs are. While Weegee's flash-lit invasive garishness and Arnold Odermatt's elegant twisted cars and campy police procedures can easily be trotted out as viable comparisons given their common subject matter, I came away convinced that Metinides is a true original, with a particular talent for stepping back to capture the complexities and beauty of the larger scene surrounding a central tragedy.

 

In a city as densely populated as Mexico City, Metinides clearly had plenty of opportunities to capture dramatic moments, but there are just too many smartly composed pictures here to chalk his success up to lucky right time, right place coincidence. His single frame vignettes run the gamut from the everyday (murdered spouses, drunken bar fights, overturned vehicles, and highway pileups) to the unexpected and freakish (snow drifts in liquor stores, fiery gas explosions, flash floods, derailed trains, collapsed hotels, and small planes crashed into the streets). But in Metinides' hands, these accidents become the raw material for powerful stories that go far beyond the straightforward documentation of events. An electrocuted telephone engineer dangles from the overhead wires like a pieta. A woman hit by a car slumps between upended light poles, her dazed eyes offset by perfect hair and nails. A truck smashes through a living room wall, leaving the painting above untouched. And a bloody mother clutches her child and her handbag with equal determination.

 

Like Weegee, Metinides has a particular flair for including the reactions of onlookers and passersby, using their expressions and gestures to decorate the main action. A dead family lies in a smashed car, the curious crowd peering in through the shattered window. A body floats in a canal, with throngs of spectators reflected in the murky water. A stabbing victim is fanned by an outstretched arm holding a cowboy hat. And an overturned bus in a hole draws such a crowd that an ice cream cart sets up shop to service the customers. Grief and anguish come in many forms, from a woman literally tearing her hair out in a crazed frenzy to the defeated slump of a woman embracing a child's coffin and from the grimace of a boy with his hand trapped in a meat grinder to the lonely swing of a hanging suicide in a majestic old tree. Metinides also clearly had an awareness of movies, as many of his pictures are boldly cinematic: an action-packed shootout takes place in a grocery store, suicide jumpers perch atop tall buildings, and plane crash survivors lie dazed and bloodied in front of a broken fuselage. Even his still lifes feel energetic, with crashed train cars, melted dolls, a murder weapon held by a pen in the barrel, and an x-ray of a tequila bottle inexplicably wedged into a pelvis all telling stories brimming with life.

 

In the end, while these pictures are filled with horrors usual and unusual, they have been crafted with such skill that the heightened emotions are balanced by brilliantly thoughtful framing. The pictures never descend into intrusive exploitation and never lose sight of the genuine sorrow on display. Don't be put off by the bus crashed over the viaduct or the drowning victim being pulled out of the pool - there are richly intense and profoundly human moments to be seen here, all captured by an artist who deserves much more recognition than he has heretofore received.

 

Collector's POV: Unlike the prints in most Aperture shows, these modern prints are actually for sale. The 11x14 prints are $1800 each and the 16x20 prints are $2500 each. The set of 10 toy prints with bag is $1500. Metinides' work has very little secondary market history in the past decade, with only a handful of lots coming up for sale and finding buyers in that time. Prices have ranged between $1500 and $2500, but this is likely not entirely representative of the market for his best vintage work. If gallery representation or other sources of Metinides' vintage work exists the US or elsewhere, please add the information in the comments.

 

Rating: *** (three stars) EXCELLENT (rating system described here) 

 

Transit Hub: 

• Features/Reviews: Guardian (here), VICE (here), LA Times (here), NY Times (here)

101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides

Through April 20th

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

Antonio Caballero, Las Rutas de la Pasión, Mexico 1960's -1970's @Sikkema Jenkins

JTF (just the facts): A total of 19 individual black and white images and 1 group of 28 black and white images as a single work, hung in the entry, the main gallery space and two side rooms. All of the prints are modern gelatin silver prints (made between 2005 and 2010) made from negatives taken between 1960 and 1980. There are 7 smaller 24x20 prints on view in the entry, framed in white and matted, in editions of 6. There are also 12 larger prints on view in the other rooms, each 40x40, framed in white and not matted, in editions of 6. An intact portion of a fotonovela is displayed as 28 images hung edge to edge, pinned directly to the wall in a long line, each print 7x7 unframed, the entire set in an edition of 3. (Installation shots at right.).

Comments/Context: During the 1960s and 1970s, Antonio Caballero was a prolific maker of Mexican fotonovelas, a kind of photography-based graphic novel form, filled with soap opera-style narratives of love and betrayal. By taking them out of their original sequenced context and blowing them up to large scale, this show takes these dated pop culture images and recharacterizes them, highlighting their entertaining retro-melodrama.

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The images on view are full of big sculpted hair, exaggerated expressions, and staged moments of intrigue: a man cradles a slumped woman in the street, a young woman looks on in horror as she discovers a stolen kiss, a dead woman lies face down on the stairs as another woman looks on with barely concealed glee, two stylish women exchange secrets on a train platform. The scenes are theatrical and exaggerated, with plenty of opportunities for good looking people to pose with fashionable glamour.

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While these confections are simple and diverting, I don't think they deliver much more than a dose of outlandish fun with a sliver of muted irony. They are the kind of stills that Cindy Sherman re-enacted and dissected by adding an underlayer of conceptual rigor. As such, they are the original article: their artificiality pleasingly amusing, but ultimately empty of deeper ideas.
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Collector's POV: The smaller 24x20 works are priced at $4500 each, while the larger 40x40 prints are $8500 each. Caballero's work has little or no secondary market history, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)

Antonio Caballero, Las Rutas de la Pasión, Mexico 1960's -1970's

Through January 22nd

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Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Paul Strand in Mexico @Aperture

JTF (just the facts): A total of 120 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted and hung throughout the gallery space (which is divided by several interior walls). 99 of the images are by Paul Strand (a mix of vintage and later prints), 22 are film stills by Ned Scott, and there is 1 image by Weegee (of a movie marquee advertising Strand's film). A central room has been created by three internal walls, and it contains a screen displaying Strand's 1936 film Redes, as well as variety of letters and other ephemera. This yellow-walled room also contains examples of Strand's back-to-back mounting technique and paired prints showing different processes and the evolution of his printing style over many decades. A map of Strand's travels in Mexico is near the entrance to the exhibit. Aperture has also recently published a lavish scholarly monograph of this body of work; it can be found (here). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Master photographer Paul Strand spent the period between 1932 and 1934 in Mexico, and many collectors will be familiar with The Mexican Portfolio, the tightly edited 20 image output from his extended journey there. In this museum quality exhibition, Aperture has extended the academic study of this period in Strand's career and unearthed a treasure trove of published and unpublished images from his time in Mexico. Taken together, they provide a much broader context for understanding both the evolution of his artistic approach and the larger social and political forces that were at work during those years.

Strand's images from Mexico can be roughly grouped into four subject matter genres: portraits of people, landscapes, architectural details, and images of religious folk sculptures and icons. Many of the essays in the accompanying monograph see these images coming together to provide a portrait of the country's character, or as a visual document of a specific place and time, and I think that analysis has some validity; as a whole, when seen in sequence, Strand's photographs have clearly captured an interplay of cultural and natural forces that coalesces into a common environmental mood. What I found most striking was the mixing of documentary and artistic sensibilities, where Strand's rigorous aesthetic control has been combined with the emotional suffering of the religious artifacts, the severity of the land and its buildings, and a subtle patina of nationalist fervor.

To my eye, the portraits of the people (whether we call them local, indigenous, native, or just the rural poor) are the standout pictures in this project. Men, women and children stand against pock marked brick walls and wooden doors or sit on the ground holding baskets. They wear everyday clothes: hats, capes, ponchos, cotton wraps, covered in dust and full of holes, bare feet sticking out. The images mix textures rich in tonality, and find contrasts of dark and light, with shadows slashing across backgrounds. But is the harsh power in the faces that makes them memorable; there is heroism, grace, patience, and dignity in these portraits, with an undercurrent of steely strength. The consistent dynamic quality and intensity of these photographs is truly astounding.

I am very pleased to see Aperture really pushing the scholarship ball forward here. The monograph is really a catalogue raisonné of Strand's Mexican work, documenting every single image in the Archive and providing further historical context for his relationships, influences, and activities. It is an invaluable reference tool for this specific Mexican work, and provides a surprisingly extensible framework for thinking about Strand's work in other locations around the world. So come for the show and see the unknown back story to The Mexican Portfolio, and then take home the wrist breaking book for further study.

Collector's POV: Aperture represents the Paul Strand Archive, but this show is more like a museum exhibition than a gallery show; none of the works is readily for sale and no price list is available. Limited edition posthumous prints of some of the images are available directly from Aperture for $450 each (here). Strand's The Mexican Portfolio of photogravures was originally issued in two different edition sizes: the first in an edition of 250, and the second in an edition of 1000. These portfolios can be found in the secondary markets relatively regularly, with prices for the first edition ranging from $10000 to $45000, and prices for the second edition ranging from $2000 to $10000. Individual prints from his time in Mexico are more scarce, with prices ranging from $3000 to $65000 in recent auction sales.

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Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: New Yorker (here), Wall Street Journal (here), Artinfo (here)
• Exhibition: Bronx Museum (here)

Paul Strand in Mexico

Through November 13th

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

The Dawn of Modernism: Early Twentieth-Century Mexican Photography @Throckmorton

JTF (just the facts): A group show containing a total of 34 black and white photographs, framed in thick black and matted, and hung in the elevator lobby and main gallery space (divided by several linen interior walls). The prints are a mix of vintage and later prints, in both gelatin silver and platinum. The majority were made between the 1920s and the 1940s. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers are included in the exhibit, with the number of images on view in parentheses:

Lola Alvarez Bravo (2)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (8)
Hugo Brehme (1)
Anton Bruehl (4)
Hector Garcia (2)
Fritz Henle (2)
Leo Matiz (4)
Tina Modotti (6)
Edward Weston (4)

Mariana Yampolsky (1)

Comments/Context: Mexican modernism from the first half of the 20th century really has a special flavor all its own, meaningfully different from the photographic "modernisms" of Europe or America from the same time period. It combines the political fervor of the post-revolutionary period, a renewed attention to the symbols of traditional Mexican life, the historical mind set of the Mexican muralist painters, and the radical ideas of a number of influential artistic transplants into a potent stew of ideas, tinged with a bit of romance and bathed in the harsh, pure light of Mexico's geography.

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This show gathers together a sample of work from the main figures of the period, along with work from a group of somewhat lesser known contributors to the movement. While the aesthetic is modernist, with clean lines, pared down compositions, and found abstractions, the subject matter is uniquely Mexican: men in sombreros, women with water jugs, street markets, cacti, agave, and portraits of famous artists like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. There are plenty of excellent Modottis, Westons, and Alvarez Bravos on display that will be familiar to collectors, as well as some secondary images that are worth a look. I particularly enjoyed Manuel Alvarez Bravo's wood pile and peeled jicamas, spare still lifes with geometric clarity. While this exhibit isn't a definitive or exhaustive scholarly study of Mexican modernism, it does successfully provide a taste of what makes the pictures from this period so distinctly intriguing.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show range in price from $2500 (Brehme) to $35000 (Modotti and Weston), with most under $10000.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews: New Yorker (here), Village Voice (here)

The Dawn of Modernism: Early Twentieth-Century Mexican Photography
Through September 11th

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Throckmorton Fine Art

145 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

Flor Garduño, Mujeres Fantasticas @Throckmorton

JTF (just the facts): A total of 26 black and white images, displayed in wide black frames, throughout the gallery. Most of the works are 20x16 inches, although there are a handful in a larger size (approximately 40x30 inches). Negatives range from the late 1980s to the present. (Installation shot at right.)

Comments/Context: Looking at the work of Mexican photographer Flor Garduño, you would never, ever, mistake her work for that made by a man. Indeed, Garduño's images are among the most overtly "female" pictures we have seen.

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Nearly all of Garduño's pictures have a sensual female form/nude staged together with symbols from the natural world (fruit, leaves, flowers, feathers etc.). Her compositions have an earthy mythology to them, an almost dream-like or magical quality that seems drawn from the long history of Latin America. In her early days, Garduño was an assistant to Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and she seems to have absorbed the same love of the uniquely Mexican culture, as well as the ability to structure images with poetic simplicity. She is also a master printer; all of her works are printed with an astounding and meticulous attention to dark and light. This show mixes a few new pieces with a variety of other works from the past decade or two, so there is some ability to see how her approach and aesthetic has been refined over time.

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Collector's POV: For us, while Garduño's work is always made with an original point of view and with thoughtful care, the results are often hit or miss. When it works, the images are stunning; when it doesn't, the works feel a bit contrived and odd. The works in this show are priced between $2500 and $9000, dependent mostly on size it seems. We actually already own an excellent nude by Garduño (Los Limones, 1998, found here and also on display in this exhibit), which we bought a few years ago from Andrew Smith (gallery site here) when we were living on the West coast. In addition to prints found in the retail market, Garduño's work has become more available at reasonable prices in the secondary market in the past few years.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Flor Garduño, Mujeres Fantasticas

Through January 9th

Throckmorton Fine Art

145 East 57th Street

New York, NY 10022