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Enrique Metinides
HC 27,5x25 cm
Ridinghouse 2003

"From 1948 until his forced retirement in 1979, the Mexican photographer Enrique Metinides took thousands of images and followed hundreds of stories in and around Mexico City. And what images and stories they were: car wrecks and train derailments, a bi-plane crashed on to a roof, street stabbings and shootings in the park, apartments and petrol stations set alight, earthquakes, accidental explosions, suicides, manslaughters, murder.
Metinides photographed his first corpse when he was 12. A year later, he became an unpaid assistant to the crime photographer of Mexican newspaper La Prensa, and his pictures appeared in La Nota Roja - the red note or, more colloquially, the Bloody News, the best-selling tabloid.
Now almost 70, Metinides is about to hold his first European show. He has said that he based his photographic style on black-and-white action movies, on cops and gangster flicks. Some of his first boyhood photos were of what he saw on the cinema screen, while others were of the car crashes that were always happening outside his father's restaurant. Always known as El Nino - the boy - Metinides got everywhere from the first, hanging around the police station, going to the morgue, not chasing the ambulance but travelling in it as a volunteer with the Red Cross. " Adrian Searle, The Guardian


"Die Kunstgalerien feiern inzwischen seinen Stil. Metinides Fotos sind heute im Museum of Modern Art in New York zu bewundern. In den Galerien von London und New York können Silverprints seiner Bilder für 1800 Dollar gekauft werden. In der angesehenen Photographer's Galery in London hatte Metinides bereits eine große Ausstellung, bei der Kritiker auf die christliche Ikonografie von Metinides Kompositionen hinwiesen. Die "Kreuzabnahme" eines Mannes, der beim illegalen Stromabzapfen ans Kabel geriet. Die "Pietà", die ihren im Park erstochenen Liebhaber beweint. Die "Dreifaltigkeit" von Selbstmörder und zwei Rettern hoch oben auf dem Baugerüst. Die Kritiker schrieben von der "herausragenden Schönheit" des Todes auf seinen Fotos." MDR

 


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