MARIO ALGAZE

A RESPECT FOR LIGHT
April 9th – May 16th, 2015

THROCKMORTON FINE ART will present works by Latin American photographer Mario Algaze, made in the classic tradition of modernist, all black and white photography. Coming out of a long Latin American tradition from surrealist Manuel Alvarez Bravo to artists like Rufino Tamayo, Giorgio De Chirico, written works of Gabriel García Márquez, Tennessee Williams, and films like Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief and Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Algaze packs each frame with narrative.

Algaze favors the morning hours – the magical time when the sun casts a soft glow on the landscape. His streets are often almost empty and figures, which he often captures at a distance, are elegantly choreographed to freeze heightened moments of grace. The human presence is very important to the photographer, who often waits for figures to enter the scene, thereby coalescing its magic before he takes the photograph. The picture plane is always tightly composed— it is obvious that every part of the frame is carefully considered. This interest in finding and building geometries lies in the classic modernist tendency to seek order from chaos.

Algaze has the soul of a storyteller and he seeks what he terms, profundidad or the depth of human emotion. His photographs are as much about the artist’s own search for the self as they are about the places and people that he photographs. They reveal inner states of mind and simultaneously tell stories about endurance, ancient traditions and their intersection with contemporary life.

Mr.Throckmorton says, “Mario Algaze, A Respect for Light” show comprises exquisite black & white photographs of street scenes and interiors taken in Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia and other Latin American countries between 1974 and 2011. Algaze’s work focuses on light and the poetic narrative of life.

Born in Cuba in 1947, he relocated with his family to Miami in 1960 just after the Cuban Revolution. He is a selftaught photographer who began his career in 1970 as a freelance journalist. From 1979 to 1981, he was owner and director of Gallery Exposures in Coral Gables, Florida. Algaze’s work has been the focus of many one-person and group exhibits nationally and internationally, including at the University of California, San Diego; the Milwaukee Art Museum; and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

His works are in many public, private and corporate collections including those of the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Miami Art Museum; the Milwaukee Art Museum; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach; Lehigh University Art Galleries; and the Museum Tamayo, Mexico City, among others.

He received an individual Florida Artist Fellowship from the Florida Arts Council in 1989, a Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Photography, Institute of Education, United Nations, New York, New York in 1991, and several fellowships sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991 and 1992. Monographs include; Mario Algaze Portafolio Latinamericano, (Munich: Gina Kehayoff. 1997); Mario Algaze: Cuba 1999-2000, (New York: Throckmorton Fine Art, 1999-2000); Mario Algaze Portfolio, (Miami Beach: Di Puglia Publisher, 2010), and most recently, Mario Algaze, A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs: 1974 2008, (New York: Glitterati Incorporated, 2014). In late 2014, Algaze’s work was the focus of a major retrospective at History Miami.