“Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944-2013,” a new exhibition at the International Center for Photography, focusses on the ways in which political and social turmoil have sculpted urban identity in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and elsewhere in the region. The photographs in the exhibition are on loan from Leticia and Stanislas Poniatowski, who have, with the help of their curator, Alexis Fabry, assembled one of the foremost private collections of Latin American photography in the world. It includes work from acknowledged masters such as Graciela Iturbide, as well as from lesser-known talents such as Fernell Franco and Jesús Ruiz Durand. To find the photographs, Fabry visited bookstores and flea markets from Lima to Buenos Aires, and he worked with people like Maria Wills, a museum curator from Bogotá. (Fabry and Wills organized “Urbes Mutantes.”) “Photographers themselves are very often a great help to me; it is not rare that they suggest a work or mention a forgotten figure,” Fabry told me. “It is thanks to Oscar Muñoz that I discovered the photographic work of Ever Astudillo, and thanks to Leonora Vicuña that I could contact Mauricio Valenzuela.”
“Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography 1944-2013” will be on view from May 16th through September 7th.
