October 2004

Following on from the successful Tina Modotti and Edward Weston show at the Barbican earlier this year, a new exhibition by one of Mexico’s best known photojournalists offers a compelling record of recent events, says Elizabeth Mistry.

Araceli Herrera likes to joke that she “learned to be a photographer in 15 minutes”. One of only a handful of women working as a newspaper photographer in Mexico today, she has spent the past two decades honing her craft, still using the same Nikon camera, nicknamed ‘La Tomasa’ that she bought with her first wages.

Born in Mexico City, the daughter of a Zapotec woman from the Sierra de Oaxaca, Herrera’s work is notable for her interest in and commitment to those on the fringes of society.

At fifteen she left school to work as a receptionist in a picture agency but her employers were reluctant to teach her their craft until one day her boss took her aside, told her they were “a man short” and gave her a run of the basics. He then sent her out – to cover the inauguration of President Miguel de la Madrid.

The next day her work featured in seven national newspapers.

Herrera’s first UK exhibition, at the Oxo Gallery in London, covers 20 years of social and political upheaval. She has photographed earthquakes, elections and, as one of the first graphic reporters to reach Chiapas in January 1994, the nascent Zapatista uprising.

But it is her images of Coyul, a Mixtecan village in Guerrero that are the highlight of the show. Her extended stay, during which she also worked as a literacy teacher, enabled her to show a side of that community rarely captured. The portrait of a family fresh from their temazcal, stands out as one of my favourites for its sheer joyfulness and spontaneity.

Rather than creating ‘perfect pictures’, her mission, she says to chronicle Mexican life as she sees it. Curator Miriam Haddu, lecturer in Hispanic Visual Arts at Royal Holloway, says that Herrera’s work represents a new phase in Mexican photography, going beyond the pioneering work of Mariana Yampolsky, to create a very different record of contemporary Mexico.

To select just 40 prints from two decades of work is a hugely difficult task but Haddu has pulled together a remarkable show – offering images across the spectrum from a portrait of a pensive Octavio Paz to the unrestrained laughter of a group of Purepecha women during a brief stop as they march to Mexico City.

Mexico Through The Lens: 20 Years of Political, Social and Historic Change 1983- 2003.
the.gallery@oxo, Oxo Tower Wharf, South Bank, London. Open daily 11am-6pm, admission free. Until 24 October.

 This month, Richard Perry revisits the colourful “folk baroque” churches of Cupilco, Guaytalpa and Ayapa in the southern state of Tabasco.

‘Time Zones’ is the first major exhibition at Tate Modern devoted exclusively to film and video. It brings together works by ten international artists who, using a range of different techniques to mimic the passing of time, examine and describe the specific tempo of a particular place at a particular time. The exhibition concludes with Francis Alÿs’ “Zócalo”, which over 12 hours of uninterrupted footage records the coming and goings on Mexico City’s vast main plaza, where a central flagpole offers a constantly changing strip of shade: as the sun moves, the line of people standing in the flagpole’s shadow shifts around the huge square creating a giant human sundial.

Alÿs is a situationist artist who has lived and worked in Mexico City since the late 1980s. He continually challenges and stretches the definition of art by performing deeds which are usually centered around the act of walking in the city streets.

In a 1996-work, Turista, Alÿs stood with a sign, amongst workers with handwritten signs advertising their trades such as plumber or electrician, looking for a job in their traditional spot in one corner of the zócalo. Alÿs appears as someone looking to be employed in his specialist trade of ‘tourist’.

‘Time Zones: Recent Film and Video’ is at Tate Modern, London SE1, from 6 Oct – 2 Jan 2005.

The 32nd Festival Cervantino opens in Guanajuato and other locations in central Mexico today.

This is the poster chosen by a jury to represent this year’s festival and attract a more youthful audience. It depicts a tradition-breaking modern-pseudo-Cervantes (after whom the festival is named) stripped to the waist with fetching tattoos and body-piercings. It was labelled ‘immoral’ and banned by the conservative PAN-led Guanajuato State Legislature. Creators Lourdes and Luis Almeida picked up a lot of free publicity and their 50,000 pesos (about $4,500 US dollars) prize money.

Until 24 October. At venues around the city; for a full listing visit the festival’s website. For tickets call Ticketmaster: +52 (55) 5325-9000 or visit their website.

All-in-wrestling, known in Mexico as lucha libre (literally ‘free fight’), is more than a sport. Seven nights a week Mexican arenas fill with fans of all ages who come in search of excitement, visual splendour, black humour and daring acrobatic displays. Wrestlers are national heroes with a larger following than most bull-fighters or pop-stars.

Some of this spectacle comes to a corner of the UK this week, with Arena Mexico, a celebration of Mexican wrestling at the University of Essex from 4-8 October.

The programme includes an exhibition of prints by Oaxacan artist Demián Flores Cortés, live Mexican wrestling featuring El Hijo del Santo vs Blue Panther, film screenings and talks. Kudos to the UECLAA for bringing all this together. Wonderful.
Illustration © Hector Javier Dinorin Gutiérrez

I’ve always idealised that browsing my own website about Mexico was the next-best-thing-to-being-there. This was clearly presumptuous on my part, for I’m about to be outflanked by a German company that sends postcards from far-flung destinations – on behalf of people who have never even been there.

According to the online news provider Ananova, the MayDayCard company, based in Mannheim in Germany, collects personally-written cards and sends them from exotic locations around the world, to impress the recipient of the card. The going rate for a card from Mauritius, for example, is reportedly GBP8.50. Ananova reports that a team of 20 people working in the travel trade, including pilots and flight attendants, are involved in the operation. So, you may soon be able to fool family and friends into believing you’re in Mexico, even when you’re not. But hey, why pretend when you can visit Mexicanwave…

http://maydaycards.com/ (in German).