Fundacion Mapfre presents until February 28th, the first major retrospective of Paz Errázuriz (Santiago, 1944), one of the most famous Chilean photographers. The exhibition features over 170 works (photographs and video).
Paz Errбzuriz’s photography emerged in her native country, Chile, in the first half of the 1970s in a political context dominated by the brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship.
Her first steps were influenced by an extremely tense and uncertain social situation which affected the lives of opponents of the coup d’кtat. Going out on the street with a camera was risky for anyone aiming to capture events as they happened and was also perceived as a threat by the military regime. It was even less common to see a woman undertaking the type of investigations characteristic of photography.
In 1980 Paz Errбzuriz presented her first solo exhibition, entitled Personas [People], at the Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano in Santiago. The following year she and some fellow photographers co-founded the Asociacion de Fotografos independientes (AFI).
During that dark period, Errбzuriz’s self-taught photographic gaze focused on homeless people sleeping rough, scraping a living or destitute. This series, Los dormidos [The sleepers], offers a notably unheroic vision of the country, immersed in poverty. Also at that time and throughout the 1980s, Errбzuriz turned her inquisitive eye on the lifestyles of the country’s wealthy classes, who displayed their fortunes in the areas of Las Condes and La Dehesa in Santiago.
EXHIBITION
Paz Errбzuriz
Curator : Juan Vicente Aliaga
From December 14th, 2015 to February 28th, 2016
Fundacion Mapfre
Bárbara de Braganza, 13 Madrid
Spain
http://exposiciones.fundacionmapfre.org
