We have learned of the passing of Mexican and Franco-Hungarian photographer Nadja Massün. Her friend Françoise Bouffault sent us this text:
Nadja Massün left us the day before the opening of her exhibition Encuentros Afortunados at the Muséo Archivo de la Fotografía in Mexico City. The opening turned into a celebration. There was a crowd and everyone then moved in a procession led by musicians from Oaxaca towards an old renovated colonial house for a very Mexican final tribute.
Thanks to her vision rooted in her personal world and colored by the landscapes she has traveled through – especially in Transylvania and in the region of Oaxaca in Mexico where she settled, she leaves a body of work that combines realism and poetry, simplicity, refinement and above all a taste for beauty. Where she stayed, she knew how to capture with elegance and passion sad, poignant, intimate moments of everyday life, unusual or familiar characters with whom she was in full empathy. It was reflected in her photographic choices as follows:
“What attracts me are the faces, the gestures, the movements of the body which refer to a state of mind, that tell a story. The landscape is a backdrop which serves to accentuate what I am trying to do: capture a look, a scene, a moment of gravity, an interiority that speaks to me. Black and white – but not only, lends itself better to what I want to express in my photo. Black and white captures the fleeting light that emanates of a face, a dance step, a tiny event. The painter Soulages said of one of his paintings entirely painted in black that black only exists to reflect light. For me, black and white has this power to project the intangible.”
Francoise Bouffault
Nadja Massün : Encuentros Afortunados
from May 12 to August 12, 2022
MAF, Museo Archivo de la Fotografía
Republica de Guatemala 34
Centro Histórico
Ciudad de México
https://www.cultura.cdmx.gob.mx/recintos/maf
