China: Pingyao International Photography Festival (part 1)

Posted by Alasdair Foster on 13 September 2012 · Comments Off on China: Pingyao International Photography Festival (part 1)

Taking Mexico to China

CDC is presenting an exhibition of work by three of Mexico’s leading contemporary photo-artists at the Pingyao International Festival of Photography (PIP), China’s largest and longest-running photography event. Staged in the ancient city of Pingyao (a world heritage site) the festival brings together imagery from across China and around the world, attracting audiences of 200,000 visitors each year.

Organised by Alasdair Foster, ‘Ouroboros’ explores the work of three distinguished Mexican photographic artists: Pablo Lopez Luz, Fernando Montiel Klint and Dulce Pinzon. They draw variously on the traditions of landscape, social documentary and surrealism to create compelling contemporary images that suggest not only a fresh point of view, but also new understanding what we see.

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Pablo López Luz

Terrazo

Pablo López Luz seeks to re-envision the metropolitan, suburban and rural vistas of Mexico; to find a new perspective from which to see the everyday. He does so by drawing on the aesthetic traditions of Mexican landscape painting and photography, but takes on a contemporary point of view and subject matter. The relationship between human beings and the space they inhabit forms both the conceptual and the aesthetic basis for the work.

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Dulce Pinzón

The Real Story of the Superheroes

Dulce Pinzón’s series highlights the economic circulation powered by low-paid Mexican workers in New York City. She argues that they are doubly heroic in that they not only support the US economy by undertaking jobs other Americans will not do, but they send a considerable part of their wages back to support families in Mexico, thus also helping to maintain the Mexican economy. In each portrait, she dressed her latter-day heroes in the costumes of comic-book superheroes and captions them with details of the name, origin and job of each worker and the amount of money they send home.

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Fernando Montiel Klint

Acts of Faith

Fernando Montiel Klint’s images do not set out to ‘make sense’ in the real world. They are dramatic stories of the inner imagination – the place of introspection. He does not believe that organised religion or a belief in a supernatural being is the only form of faith. For him the act of contemplation can bring its own moments of inspiration and insight. With their intense colours, classical postures and complex emotional tensions, these images employ visual theatre to suggest these ‘eternal, circular’ acts of faith.

The exhibition runs 19-25 September 2012.

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Ouroboros the Book

A beautiful 60 page book is available for buy online. Published in full colour and with trilingual text (Chinese, English and Spanish) it is available in three formats:

As a printed book in either hard-back or soft-cover options

As an eBook for iPad

To buy your copy use the buttons above and follow the prompts.

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Cultural Development Consulting