“Mexican Modernism”, photographic exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia

Grant Mudford, fotos en blanco y negro chidas, soledad surrealista, imagenes
Photo by Grant Mudford, "Mexico 1976", 1976 - 

The fresh hopes of modernity reach the post-revolutionary Mexico and the photographer’s voyeurism put their focus in the documentation of the social phenomenon. Some of them, developing aesthetical point of views resulting in a dreamy peaceful nightmare of the socio economic conditions.


    
Is the beginning of the XX century in Mexico and the rural landscapes have become places where the physical material for revolution would rise. The quiet mornings in the central geography of the territory are now forgotten. The north and the south of the country are determined to get the anxious and fair claim to own the land that has been worked for the regional lords under abused conditions for so many years. 


At the end, everything and nothing changed, the farmers get the land, and the politicians the country and the money. We abandoned a dictatorial power who traces the first lines of progress, to move into a pseudo democratic model full of the vices of its ambitious partners. This way, by the third quarter of the century, the national and American cities absorb the immigrant waves of rural people leaving their devaluating lands, unproductive pieces switched off because of the lack of elemental technology and conditions to develop them. Money for a few, poverty for the masses. Before… it was, now it is.


On these new realities, where the urban landscapes begin to show its modernity and the rural visions of wealth have vanished, desolated sceneries of human life conditions were created; and always with this kind of perpetual will to look at what others overlook, the eyes of the photographers were there to document them. 


“Mexican Modernism”, exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, takes account of the work of seven of the most recognized photographers that establish new ways of seen the Mexican reality of those times. New stylish prints to catch moments, beautiful aesthetic of a country into inner revolt. Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Anton Bruehl, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tina Modotti, Grant Mudford, Paul Strand, Edward Weston are part of the event. 


The exhibition will offer a vision of a country in the road of transformation, a transformation that in its not to deeper roots never has arisen. A country, my country that never has understood that the real transformation comes from the mind and its way to see the world. A transformation that captures what really matters. And once done, a fair reality will appear. Mexican Modernism until 26 November 2017. 




Manuel Álvarez Bravo, fotos en blanco y negro chidas, soledad femenina, imagenes de desamor, chica triste aburrida,
Photo by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, "El ensueño" -The daydream- 1931

Anton Bruehl, fotos en blanco y negro chidas, imagenes mexico antiguo, campesinos,
Photo by Anton Bruehl, "Tomando el sol, San Juan Teotihuacan" - Sunbathing, San Juan Teotihuacan - 1932

Paul Strand, fotos de mexico antiguo en sepia, años 30's,
Photo by Paul Strand Architectural study, Mexico 1933




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