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Indepth Arts News:
"Picturing Guatemala: Images From the CIRMA Photography Archive, 1870-1997"
2000-02-18 until 2000-04-16
Americas Society
New York, NY,
USA United States of America
The Americas Society is pleased to announce the exhibition Picturing Guatemala: Images from the CIRMA
Photography Archive, 1870-1997 the first survey of Guatemalan photography to be presented in the United
States. This exhibition will explore the history and development of photography in Guatemala in over 100
images, from temples to plantations, travelers to politicians, soldiers to families. The almost completely
unknown wealth of images in Picturing Guatemala will also offer an exhilarating view of over one hundred and
twenty years of the nation’s cultural history. The exhibition will also celebrate the third year of peace in
Guatemala after the cease fire agreement of December 4, 1996.
Many of the photographs on view will be rare vintage
prints, including a number of nineteenth-century cartes
de visite and large-format works. Others are prints made
from original glass plate negatives in the CIRMA
photography archive in Guatemala collection. The
exhibition also features several exceptional photographic
albums, including a unique example by Eadweard
Muybridge from 1875, an album assembled by Joaquín
Alcain in 1886, and an album depicting the Guatemalan
pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.
Images by nineteenth-century ethnographic photographers
Emilio Herbruger and Alberto Valdeavellano, as well as
by several anonymous practitioners, will precede the work
of early twentieth-century figures such as Juan José de
Jesús Yas, José Domingo Noriega, and Tomás Zanotti,
whose portrait work is posed and theatrical.
Mid-twentieth-century artists who portrayed
modernization, industrialization, and political events in
Guatemala during the 1940s and 1950s include Sol
Libsohn, and many unknown photographers. Images of
both daily life and social upheaval from the end of the
century by Moisés Castillo, Daniel Chauche, Mitchel
Denburg, Patricia Goudvis, and María Cristina Orive will
also be exhibited.
Picturing Guatemala has been organized by the Centro de
Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA), which was
founded in 1968 in Antigua, Guatemala. CIRMA remains the largest
photographic archive in Guatemala, and one of the most important in all
of Central America. CIRMA is not affiliated with any governmental
body and maintains an independent political perspective. The curator of
Picturing Guatemala is Valia Garzón Díaz, who is the curator of
CIRMA. The exhibition traveled to the Museo Latino in Los Angeles,
its only other presentation in the United States. An illustrated
black-and-white catalogue documenting the exhibition will be available
for sale. A related exhibition of recent work by contemporary
Guatemalan photographer Luis González Palma will be on view at
Throckmorton Fine Art (153 East 61st Street, New York) from January
12 until February 26, 2000.
The Americas Society Art Gallery is open to the public Tuesdays
through Sundays, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., admission is $3, $2 for
students and seniors, and complimentary admission for members.
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