Indigena | Women of Latin America

November 19th, 2020 – March 13th, 2021

Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibit of photography that focuses on women in Latin America, especially indigenous women from the region. There are some fifty photographs in the exhibit, nearly all of them in black- and-white. The photographs are from the most celebrated photographers who have worked in the region. Included are images by Henri Cartier Bresson, Tina Modotti, Laura Gilpin, Helen Levitt, Fritz Henle, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Mariana Yampolsky, Nacho López, and Héctor García. Also featured are works by distinguished contemporary photographers working in Latin America: Mario Algaze, Valdir Cruz, Javier Silva Meinel, and the two Mexican photographers who are renowned heirs of Manuel Álvarez Bravo, the “father of Mexican photography”: Flor Garduño and Graciela Iturbide. Finally, there is innovative new work by the niece of Frida Kahlo, Cristina Kahlo.

All photographers who have worked in Latin America, male and female, have at one time or another been drawn to the women of the region as a subject. There is the beauty of the women of Latin America, but there is also their strength and their admirable resilience. The women of Latin America are powerful, often serving as heads-of-households, recognized as such or not, and they maintain families under often adverse circumstances.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has hit Latin America hard: the region has 8 percent of the world’s population, but it has had 30 percent of the world’s infections and 36 percent of the world’s deaths from the disease. Governments have often been of little or no assistance, forcing communities to fend for themselves. Women have often been the linchpin of community—and family—efforts at perseverance.

The photographs included in the exhibit offer portraits from throughout the region, including from Mexico, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Peru, and Brazil. Women are shown at rest, at labor, playing with their children, praying, sleeping, and even daydreaming (according to the title of a photograph by Manuel Álvarez Bravo). The photographs are all accomplished works of fine art, distinguished for their compositions, their mastery of light and shadow, and their quality of printing (nearly all are gelatin silver prints). All of the photographs, too, give women, even those living in poverty, a deserved dignity.

This exhibit is a tribute to the strong and proud women of Latin America. A catalogue accompanies the exhibit. It features an essay by Graciela Kartofel.