Publisher's Synopsis
The Autumn 2005 exhibition, 'Silent Natures by Flor Garduño' is dedicated to art photography: an exhibition by Mexican photographer Flor Garduño, woman and artist of international fame who, as some may know, has lived for many years in Ticino, bringing her own cultural experience and true Latin roots. This book offers thirty-two large format photographs, many of which are on display for the first time, and which as a whole highlight the more recent studies in her artistic career. A poetic and tormented photographic language deriving essentially from the interiorisation of pain and from the loss of roots and identity not only in Latin American countries, but in general in modern man. The work of Flor Garduño is deep rooted in her studies into the fervid cultural climate, full of originality and creative strength, in the Mexico of Manuel Alvarez Bravo (for whom she was both student and assistant) and of Tina Midotti, together with those rich in symbolic value of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Flor Garduño was born in Mexico City in 1957, her two homes are in Stabio (Ticino canton, Switzerland) and Tepoztlán (Mexico). She studied at the San Carlos Academy in her home city, and then became assistant to Manuel Alvarez Bravo until 1980, when she began her independent career as photographer. She published her first book of photography in 1985, Magia del juego eterno (Oax-Mexico). Many others followed, amongst which: Bestiarium (Zurich 1987), Witnesses of Time (1992), Mesteños (1994) and Mummenschanz (1996). Her works are displayed in no less than thirty-five museums, including: Chicago Art Institute, American Society in New York, Creative Photography Center in Tucson, the Fine Arts Museums in Mexico City, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, La Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Stiftung für Photographie in Zurich, Ludwig Museum in Cologne and the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne.
