101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides

Curated by Trisha Ziff, 212berlin

Opening reception: Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm

101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides is Enrique Metinides’s choice of the key images from over fifty years of photographing crime scenes and accidents in Mexico for local newspapers and the nota roja crime press. Accompanying the images are Metinides’s own accounts of the characters and life of the streets, the sadness of families, the criminals, and the heroism of emergency workers—which reveal much about himself as well. Selected photographs are also paired with their original newsprint tearsheets, collected by Metinides. The photographs have been compiled by Trisha Ziff, a filmmaker and curator who has collaborated with Metinides on this project for over five years and who contributed an essay about his life, work, and personality to the accompanying publication, 101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides (Aperture, 2012). Though Metinides’s photographs have been exhibited and published internationally, this is the first selection of images chosen by the photographer himself, and which offers his own account of his life’s work.

A limited‐edition portfolio featuring Metinides’s latest photographs is available through Aperture. In this series, Metinides has re‐constructed and created fictional rescue scenarios for crime scenes photographed early in his career, using his collection of over ten thousand toy firemen and medics. These recent pictures are a new twist on an extraordinary career. The prints were made at the artist’s local Costco in Mexico City, and are offered in the paper Costco bags in which he picked them up.

Enrique Metinides (born in Mexico City, 1934) worked as a crime photographer for over fifty years, capturing murders, car crashes, and catastrophes for the nota rojas, Mexico’s infamous crime magazines. He has won numerous prizes and received recognition from the Presidency of the Republic, journalists’ associations, rescue and judicial corps, and Kodak of Mexico. In 1997 he received Mexico’s Espejo de Luz Prize (Mirror of Light), awarded to the country’s most outstanding photographer. His work as been shown internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Les Rencontres d’Arles festival, France; and the Photographers’ Gallery, London.

Trisha Ziff is a curator of contemporary photography, a filmmaker, and a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient. She has produced and directed several award-winning documentary films that deal with photographic subjects, including Chevolution (2008) and The Mexican Suitcase (2011).

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