Libros de Historia y crítica de la fotografía, página 2 de 287

From found photographs ("Luriki", 1971-85) to cinematic vistas ("By the Ground", 1991), from staged self-portraiture ("I am Not I", 1992) to social documentation ("Case History", 1997-98), Boris Mikhailov has experimented with many photographic forms and styles, in a constant urge to question reality. At the beginning of his career as a photographer, Mikhailov earned his living by retouching and colouring ordinary family photographs ("Luriki" 1971-85). Apart from his commercial work, he photographed the rituals of Soviet public life in Red Series (1968-75) and ridiculed the regime and its visual propaganda in his series Sots Art (1975-86). At around the same time, he conceived his series "Unfinished Dissertation", which consisted of hundreds of images glued on the back of an unfinished dissertation, that he had found in a dustbin. Finally, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he focused on social subject matter, documenting poverty in Kharkov and Moscow in his series "By the Ground" (1991), and hiring homeless people for his recent series "Case History" (1997-98). Mikhailov's dissidence is both political and visual. He has explored the various possibilities of photography, combining its uses as a conceptual project, an historical record, a political commentary, and as a work of art. "Yesterday's Sandwich" will feature one of Mikhailov's earliest bodies of work, his thought-provoking colour Superimposition series made in the late 60s and early 70s. It is called "Yesterday's Sandwich", because each superimposed image is created by overlaying two slides. Mikhailov accidentally invented this technique in the late 1960s when looking at his slides. As paper was expensive and difficult to find at that time, he did not print the images but showed them in slide shows. It was not until the early 1990s that he actually printed the images on paper. In this fascinating series, the images can be interpreted on two levels. At first, the background seems to show reality, but this reality is immediately distorted by the intrusion of an unexpected object, form or colour. With this superimposed image the photographer introduces a different point of view - a political commentary, a personal fantasy, or simply a formal device. Superimposition inc

Ricardo Pérez Montfort, en un diálogo con imágenes preservadas en la Fototeca del INAH, hace una revisión somera de la historia de las drogas en las primeras décadas del siglo XX en México, no sólo para dar fe del transito y la imposicion de un criterio prohibicionista e intolerante desde la esfera gubernamental, sino tambien para desentrañar una complicada red de complicidades, corrupciones, temores, presiones, actitudes e intereses en la que la clandestinidad enlaza la produccion, el trafico y el consumo con las autoridades oficiales.

A SMALLER-SCALE VERSION OF PETER JIRMANN''S INSIGHTFUL COLLECTION OF FEMALE NUDES OF THE SAME TITLE.

Acclaimed photographer Peter Jirmanns focus is the female nude but his pictures reveal as much about emotion and personality as they do the contours and surfaces of the human body. His images capture his subjects ironical outlook on the world. Jirmann meticulously plans each shot before he actually takes the picture - the camera angle, the pose, the setting - so that nothing is left to chance. His are intensely erotic images of devastatingly beautiful women, each masterfully composed in a way that tells a story and becomes the basis for dreams.