THE HUMAN FAMILY
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
- Central and South America resented the extensive cultural, political, and economic influence of the United States.
- In the Years before World War II, Latin American photographers had responded positively to European experiments on photographic form, such as Surrealism.
- As in North America and Europe, photographers increasingly found work creating advertising and other commercial images.
- During the 1959 Cuban Revolution, local photographers such as Raúl Corrales documented the progress of the struggle, along with foreign correspondents and photographers.
- A significant exception was Alberto Díaz, (1928-2000), who created a defining image of the revolution.
- In post- World War II Latin America, photography too many forms, ranging from the work of itinerants to fashionable portraits such as those made by Grete Stern, one of the partners in studio ringl and pit, who emigrated from Germany to Argentina.
- Raquel Tibol emphasized the growing desire to view Latin American photography as “an artistic family”.
- According to Tibol, Latin American photographers shared several outlooks, including “ the rejection of an alienating and unjust society; the denunciation of exploitation, marginalization and colonization; a rupture with conventional aesthetic models, and an impulse toward a reaffirmation.”
BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA
- Claudia Andujar, a Swiss-born photographer who arrived in Brazil in 1955, embraced the outlook proclaimed at the First Colloquium of Latin American Photographers and she exhibited her work in “ Hecho en Latinoamérica.”
- Andujar manipulated the graphic contrast of her work to create sensuous surfaces that suggest vitality.
- Image-making among indigenous peoples became the hallmark of the photographers interested in pot raying Latin American identity, but photographers also looked closer to home for instances of injustice and abuse.
- Argentinean photographers Sara Facio and Alicia D’Amico began collaborating in the late 1960’s on a series depicting life in a state-run mental institution, published in 1976 as Humanario.
MEXICO
- In Mexico, photographers had already avidly turned to local subject matter before the First Colloquium.
- They recorded the lives of ordinary urban dwellers as well as the persistence of ancient religious practices among rural peoples.
- Mexican photojournalist Nacho López (1923-1986) depicted everyday life in Mexico City, sometimes posing his subjects to create a humorous or poignant effect.
- Lopez believed that photography found its finest expression in photojournalism, which thrust the image-maker into the midst of life’s theater.
- Héctor García traveled the county seeking out the survival of ancient, precolonial rituals.
- He concentrated on laborers, producing pictures that emphasize their individual imagination.
- During the 1970’s former painter Lourdes Grobet used photography as an element in “ environments”- that is, multimedia precursors of installation art.
AFRICA
- Africans learned camerawork and business procedures in European-run establishments, or as part of service in colonial military units.
- Portrait photography by Africans of Africans adapted many attributes of colonial photography, such as the portrayal of worldly accomplishments, and the display of tokens indicating social class or personal interest.
- Photography was brought to villages by traveling photographers such as Mali resident Seydou Keïta (1921-2001) infused the Westerm portrait with African qualities.
- Through most post-World War II portraiture in Africa, as in Europe, did not employ experimental techniques, a few photographers, such as Kenyan Omar Said Bakor (1932-1993), made composite portraits that sprang from the client’s desire to add people to an extant photograph.
INDIA
- Photographic practice in India took off quickly within months of the medium;s official disclosure to the world in 1839, and grew rapidly among colonial and Indian practitioners.
- In the years immediately preceding and following World War II, India constituted a large market for photographic supplies, manufactured by international companies such as Lodak and the German company Agfa.
- The pre-World WarII period saw the start of specialty magazines for photographers, including Indian Photography and Cinematography, launched by S. Lakshiminarasu in 1937, and the Kodak-sponsored Kodak Indian Magazine, founded in 1940.
- India’s best known photographer at home and abroad was Raghubir Singh (1942-1999).
- Singh started his career in color photojournalism, supplying images for international publications such as National Geographic and New York Times.
- He began creating photographic books on Indian regions, including Kerala in the south, Kashmir in the north, the Ganges River, and cities such as Bombay Western notions of realism.
Japan
- Pictorialism dominated Japanese still life, landscape and portrait photography into the 1930’s.
- It was followed by other Western inspired styles, such as Modernism, whose sharp angles and serve close-up affected art photography, advertising, and portraiture.
- The pre-World War II period saw the flourishing of illustrated publications and specialty magazines for photographers, and the manufacture of Japanese cameras for the home market.
- Shinzo Fukuhara (1883-1948) and his brother Roso Fukuhara (1892-1946), sought to counteract both the fuzzy look of art photography and the deep perspective offered by the camera.
- During the war, Japanese propaganda and war photographers dwelled on injured or dead enemy bodies and ruined buildings, subjected also pictured by other war-torn countries.