Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The author, Natalia Majluf, states that these works, created using the techniques of the “minutemen” photographers that work in provincial city plazas, could initially be thought as ethnographic or touristic photography. Nevertheless, when [...]

In this text, Rodrigo Quijano argues that Lima 01—a series of photographs of inverted images of interiors of old abandoned buildings in downtown Lima—addresses questions of forgetting and urban decay. The series makes reference to the design of [...]

Analyzing the work of Venezuelan artist Diana López, critic Jesús Fuenmayor highlights the most salient features of her work from the beginning of the 1990s (when she began her artistic career) up to the moment that the exhibition he is reviewing [...]

In his essay, the museum designer Miguel Arroyo examines the range of art created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He reaches the conclusion that the arrival of photography, film, and television led painters to abandon traditional [...]

In this essay, curator Julieta González discusses artist Claudio Perna, specifically the way he uses photography and his archive-based methodology. González argues that Perna’s photographs can be analyzed in terms of the concept of the “index [...]

In this text, the curator Luis Ángel Duque exposes the reasons why the sixth Bienal de Artes Visuales Christian Dior (1999) is dedicated to hypermedia. In his view, each of the twenty-four participants in the exhibition used imagery and expressed [...]

The authors’ curatorial approach is based on the idea of photography as a “document” rather than on its contextual specificity “over the last thirty years in which photography has enjoyed unprecedented worldwide success and our country has [...]

This text is a section of the catalogue to the exhibition of photography that accompanied the Simposio de Justicia Restaurativa y Paz en Colombia held in Cali in 2005. In it, art critic and curator María Iovino introduces the work of Colombian [...]

This essay appeared in the catalogue of Carlos Caicedo, Reportero Gráfico, the exhibition presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in 1976. In his essay, the writer and journalist Daniel Samper Pizano discusses the work of the [...]

In this essay, Rodrigo Facundo introduced his art project En la punta de la lengua, which took an in-depth look at how countries (for example Colombia) use photographic images in official reports on events, and the role played by memory, both [...]

The art and photography critic Fernando Castro reviews the works Aliento [Breath], Narcisos [Narcissi], and Lacrimarios [Tear Containers] by Oscar Muñoz that were exhibited at the Sicardi Gallery in Houston in March 2002 as part of Fotofest. [...]

This text by curator Natalia Gutiérrez was published as a chapter in the book ciudad ? espejo (Bogotá: Facultad de Artes de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2009). It provides a thorough description of the work La vida es una pasarela (2002? [...]

This text entitled “Privado: entrevista con Juan Pablo Echeverri” (2009) is an interview with Colombian artist Juan Pablo Echeverri by Iván Ordóñez. It was published on September 15, 2009 at Privado: entrevistas con artistas, a website [...]

In this straightforward and intuitive profile of Colombian photographer Nereo López, eminent writer and researcher Manuel Zapata Olivella discusses Nereo López’s work and vision of art and photography. Nereo López eschews the aestheticism of [...]

In this text, Colombian artist Libia Posada Restrepo discusses her exhibition Evidencia Clínica II and how the images in it depart from the norms of the traditional portrait genre. It is on the basis of a reflection on the place of images of women [...]

In this text, the Colombian artist Enrique Grau writes about fellow artist Cecilia Porras. Both were part of the generation of the twenties associated with the Colombian abstract avant-garde. Grau pays tribute to his friend, who had died by the time [...]

In “Una cámara registra el 9 de abril” [A Camera Documents the Ninth of April], Guillermo González describes some of the key events in the life of his father, the photojournalist Sady González, who spent several days in 1948 photographing the [...]

This text is a record of the interview by journalist Beatriz Baltodano Esguerra of Colombian photographer Abdú Eljaiek, in which Eljaiek shares his thoughts on photography in Colombia. He begins by explaining his ideas on cinematography and [...]

The historian and writer Pilar Moreno de Ángel describes an unprecedented confluence of photography, art, and the press that coalesced in late nineteenth century Colombia in one of the most unique and interesting publications ever produced in the [...]

In 1983, the Taller La Huella [Imprint Workshop] produced the first detailed history of Colombian photography between 1841 and 1948. It was based on a review of the relationship between local visual history and the general patterns of the practice of [...]

The researcher and art historian Santiago Londoño Vélez writes a thorough account of the life and work of the well-known Colombian photographer Melitón Rodríguez. Londoño describes various economic and sociocultural aspects of the development of [...]

In discussing the underlying theory that connects the essays in his book Los rostros de Medusa [Medusa’s Faces], Carlos Jiménez describes photography in terms of the question of mechanical time in the modern era. According to Jiménez, photography [...]

This document is an informative flier about the exhibition La fotografía como documento en el arte conceptual de Barranquilla. Inviting the public to attend free of charge, this program references anexhibition to take place on January 16, 1981, in [...]

The archives of the Colombian photographer Julio A. Sánchez were studied by the artist and researcher Margarita María Monsalve Pino. She used them as the basis for a discussion of avant-garde art, with specific reference to photography in Colombia [...]

Colombian anthropologists Clara Isabel Botero and Jimena Perry Posada describe the influence of educational and cultural policies on scientific and artistic projects during what was called the República Liberal in Colombia. In the authors’ view, [...]

This book, written by the journalist José Medeiros, includes photographs and text about Candomblé, the African-influenced cult in Brazil. The author provides a detailed description of the various stages in the secret religious initiation process of [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

The synopsis and the annotations in English are coming soon.                                However, our bilingual readers can click on “Español” to access this information in Spanish [...]

“Fotografía y sociedad” [Photography and Society], is the title of the first chapter of the book by the same name by the Colombian researcher and photographer Edward Goyeneche Gómez. The text includes a well-reasoned [...]

In 1987, critic Patricia Londoño wrote the first contemporary review of the subject of photography in Colombia. The article presents in chronological order and describes the publications, exhibitions, and photographic archives used, salvaged, and [...]

The text “Al ritmo del Caribe” was written by art critic and curator Miguel González, a crucial figure in the development of art from the city of Cali in the seventies. González writes about a series of events and situations in the Colombian [...]

“Guardián de las sombras” [Guardian of the Shadows] is the title of this essay by the Colombian restorer Alejandra Matiz that appears in the catalogue for Fotología 4 (2006), the event in which Leo Matiz participated with his own solo show at [...]

Beatriz González profiles the Colombian photographer Luís Benito Ramos Rodríguez, who produced an important body of work in the years between 1934 and 1950, during the period known as the República Liberal [Liberal Republic]. González, an artist [...]

As the title suggests, this is a record of the conversation between the Colombian historian Gonzalo Sánchez and the artist María Elvira Escallón (who is also Colombian) that was published in the magazine Análisis Político [Political Analysis] in [...]

This text by Eduardo Serrano is the introduction to the book Historia de la fotografía en Colombia (1840-1950). In it, Serrano explains the importance of the publication of this book for the fields of art and history insofar as it recovers the [...]

This document is an excellent example of the sort of work produced by Colombian photographer Luis B. Ramos, author of many works of photojournalism. The article includes five photographs of peasants from the Department of Boyacá, Colombia, and a [...]

In January 1938 the German magazine Gebrauchsgraphik published eight photographs of the Colombian painter and photographer Luis Benito Ramos with a brief introductory article, an exceptional achievement for a local artist. This prompted the publisher [...]

In this bilingual essay, Cuban poet and art critic Ricardo Pau-Llosa argues that Latin American painting and photography are inextricably linked by the presence of thematic similarities and shared motifs, despite their obvious formal differences. [...]

Colombian curator and art critic Miguel González provides an overview of Óscar Muñoz’s work from his first solo exhibition in Colombia through 1987, focusing on questions like the dichotomy between appearance and reality, light, and the [...]

Eduardo Serrano introduces the retrospective exhibition of the work of Ever Astudillo. Serrano considers Astudillo to be among the first Colombian artists to “imbue the art of drawing with a meaning and a presence that positioned it as an [...]

Pan magazine (1935–40) published a Spanish translation of a text written by Werner Suhr, who was the director of Gebrauchsgraphik, which introduced the Colombian photographer Luis B. Ramos to the German public. Suhr describes the Colombian [...]

This article, written by Elsa Flores for Fotografía anónima en Venezuela—the exhibition organized by Claudio Perna at the GAN (Galería de Arte Nacional) in 1979—is divided into three parts. In the first part, Flores discusses the origins of [...]

Francisco Pérez Perdomo wrote the prologue for Asfalto-Infierno, the book by Adriano González Léon (text) and Daniel González (photographs), published by El Techo de la Ballena (Caracas, 1961–68), the group to which these artists belonged. Pé [...]

This is the introduction by Colombian writer and playwright Sandro Romero Rey to Fotofijaciones [Photo Fixations], the exhibition of work by Eduardo Carvajal at Cali’s Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas [Society for Public Improvements] that was part of [...]

The artist Félix González Torres, who was born in Cuba and lives in New York, writes about the beginning of photography in the early nineteenth century, and the Kodak Company’s advertising that made taking a photograph appear so easy. He suggests [...]

In response to the exhibition, Nueva Fotografía Puertorriqueña [New Puerto Rican Photography] (1985), writer/professor Liliana Ramos Collado questions the relationship between photography and reality. There are countless ways to manipulate the [...]

Puerto Rican critic and professor Nelson Rivera Rosario writes of the importance of the exhibition Nueva Fotografía Puertorriqueña [New Puerto Rican Photography] (1985), because this medium had yet to be recognized as an artistic genre in Puerto [...]

The “Semanariocultural” [Cultural Weekly], a supplement of the newspaper El Pueblo de Cali, (1975–86) published the article, “No salgas de tu barrio. Entrevista a Ever Astudillo” [Do Not Leave Your Neighborhood: An Interview with Ever [...]

This text is an essay by the art historian Mariana Figarella published in the book Los Ochenta. Panorama de las artes visuales en Venezuela (Caracas: Galería de Arte Nacional, n.d. [1990]). Divided into seven sections, the essay begins with a [...]