

“Purse,” from the series Maria Elvia de Hank, 2009; Collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Courtesy Yvonne Venegas)

Two Mexican photographers, Daniela Rossell and Yvonne Venegas, have made significant strides in steering Mexican photography in a new direction - from focusing on poverty and indigenous communities into the secret world of the Mexican elite. Their work is now featured in a new exhibit, from March 10 through July 8, 2012, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), called Photography in Mexico: Selected Works from the Collections of SFMOMA and Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.

Yvonne Venegas, was born in Long Beach, Calif., raised in Tijuana, Mexico, and now lives in Mexico City - she is also the twin sister of multi-Latin Grammy Award winner, Julieta Venegas.

The 41-year-old photographer says an accumulation of influences inspired her to explore this topic of contemporary photography, which she began in 2006.

“The photos are part of a project that lasted four years,” she says. “It was a lot of investigation from what I’ve been doing with the upper class in Tijuana.”

She was awarded top honors for the series “The Most Beautiful Brides of Baja California” - a documentary portrait of the bourgeoisie of Tijuana, focusing on women she grew up with and the way their children are being conditioned to conform to the expectations of their class and social position.

“Once I was doing that, somebody mentioned that I had to meet the de Hank family,” she says. “They said to me, ‘If you are going to be doing pictures, you have to see them because they are the parties of the parties.’”

Venegas first met Maria Elvia de Hank, when she was about 53. She grew up in Tijuana as the daughter of an engineer. She was a beauty queen and always had a lot of attention because of her looks. In time, she married an entrepreneur in Tijuana.

“She is the center of my book,” says Venegas. “I started taking photos of the family in 2006. I came in, saw the party, and was like ‘wow.’ This is the project I had to do before I left Tijuana.”

Venegas says her four photographs showcased at the exhibition represent what she’s been looking at for many years.

“What I hope my participation demonstrates is the exploration of class and its fragile moments,” she says. “Before we usually looked down, like Graciela Iturbide, and the roughness of things. She did more of an ethnographic work. Now we’re beginning to look inside our own communities.”





Daniela Rossell, Untitled (“Ricas y Famosas”) Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase (Courtesy Daniela Rossell and Greene Naftli, New York)

Daniela Rossell, 38, lives and grew up in Mexico City. She says she studied acting and painting before she became a photographer.

“I feel like an actress playing the role of a photographer,” says the photographer of the book of 89 images, “Ricas y Famosas,” which took seven years to complete.

She calls the book which she started in 1994 and completed in 2002, her coming of age project.

“It was a way of parting ways with situations and environments that I grew up in,” says Rossell. “It was a survival tool and a rocket ship to leave.”

She says she started photographing her grandmother, and then she went younger and younger down to her step sister.

“They were into the idea of being photographed and having somebody photograph,” says Rossell. “They’ve grown up asking people to take photographs of them. Many times I wasn’t an author but enabling a situation that is happening anyway.”

Rossell decided not to put a caption on the one photo that was selected from her collection for the exhibit.

“I’m not following traditional documentary rules of photography,“ says Rossell. "I am breaking the caption to not do the same mold. It’s not photojournalism.”

Rossell says she has no idea why this one photo was chosen out of her vast collection of photos, ranging from Mexico City to Acapulco, Tabasco, Monterrey and Texas. However, she does think it is very representative of the way we live.

“I think my forte is doing visual construction, and I wouldn’t ever want to point out at what you must be looking at,” says Rossell. “Sometimes it seems like we are very numb, because we are looking at too many images. My aim is really to awaken a connection.”

KRISTINA PUGA, NBC LATINO STAFF

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