Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944–2013 at the International Center for Photography is a major survey of photographic movements in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Urbes Mutantes (Mutant Cities) takes the dynamic and occasionally chaotic Latin American city as its focus. Spanning seven decades, but focused particularly on works produced from the 1950s to the 1980s, the exhibition offers a revision of how the continent’s cities have been imagined. It is divided into sections that explore public space as a platform for protest, popular street culture, the public face of poverty, and other characteristics of the city as described in photographs.
The wall is a privileged means of expression, photographed at various times by Maya Goded, Bill Caro, Jaime Villasera, Leonora Vicuna and Graciela Iturbide, whose work is found throughout the exhibition and who are undoubtedly the major Latin American photographers. We find architecture a little further on, with a section devoted entirely to it, featuring photographs by Armando Salas Portugal and Paolo Gasparini. Another section covering advertising and consumerism has work by Facundo de Zuviria and Marco Lopez, and still another section on the idea of mobility in the city showcases work by foreign photographers like Gertjan Bartelsman.
Meanwhile, there’s a constellation of magnificent humanist photographs. They depict the Latin American nightlife (Paz Errazuriz, Hector Garcia), protest movements (Alvaro Hoppe), impoverished communities and beautiful moments from everyday life (Roberto Fontana, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Miguel Rio Branco). A selection of portraits showing leaders of the sexual revolution, shot by Adolfo Palino, Leonora Vicuna and Juan Travnik appear alongside Al Mundy’s suggestive images which plunge the viewer into a touching intimacy.
“As the 20th century progressed, amidst struggles for social justice and defense of democracy and freedom, the city became a setting for uprisings and revolutions,” says Guest Curator Alexis Fabry. “Images became as important as the stories covering the events that shaped these Latin American nations. In certain cases, politics and art were inseparable.”
Dispensing with arbitrary distinctions between genres of photography—art photography, photojournalism, documentary—Urbes Mutantes points to the depth and richness of the extensive photographic history of the region. Drawn from the collection of Leticia and Stanislas Poniatowski, the exhibition was first shown at the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República in Bogota in 2013, and is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published by Toluca Editions.
EXPOSITION
Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944–2013
International Center of Photography
Until September 7th, 2014
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
United States
(212) 857-9725
