vrijdag 22 juli 2016

Slave or Death Slaaf of Dood Ata Kando the Latin American Photobooks of Dutch Photographers Photography

In the early 1960s the Hungarian-Dutch photographer Ata Kando travelled several times to South America. There she produced various socially engaged reportages on Indian tribes in the jungles of southern Venezuela. The territory where these Indians lived and hunted was increasingly threatened by the exploitation of the forests. Kando's photographs were shown numerous places in Europe and America. Their exhibition contributed to the international struggle against the repression of the indigenous peoples in South America. Noorderlicht is showing a selection from this series.

‘In 1957 her book “Droom in het woud” (“Dream in the forest”) was published, a photo-fantasy featuring her children. In 1961 she went on a trip through the Amazon region and he became fascinated by the Indians. She returned to the area in 1965 for a lengthier stay. Exhibitions and publications featuring her photographs (also a book “Slaaf of dood”/”Slave or dead” published in 1970) played a significant part in informing the world about the destruction of the Amazon Indians and their culture. Ata Kando was teaching photography at the School of Graphic Arts in Utrecht and the AKI Academy in Enschede and she assisted many students, including well-known Dutch photographers Koen Wessing and Ad van Denderen.’

The Latin American Photobook

Horacio Fernandez (Author)

A growing appreciation of the photobook has inspired a flood of new scholarship and connoisseurship of the form--few as surprising and inspiring as The Latin American Photobook, the culmination of a four-year, cross-continental research effort led by Horacio Fernandez, author of the seminal volume Fotografia Pública. Compiled with the input of a committee of researchers, scholars, and photographers, including Marcelo Brodsky, Iatã Cannabrava, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio and Martin Parr, The Latin American Photobook presents 150 volumes from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela. It begins with the 1920s and continues up to today, providing revelatory perspectives on the under-charted history of Latin American photography, and featuring work by great figures such as Claudia Andujar, Barbara Brändli, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Horacio Coppola, Paz Errázuriz, Graciela Iturbide, Sara Facio, Paolo Gasparini, Daniel González, Boris Kossoy, Sergio Larrain and many others. The book is divided into thematic sections such as "The City," "Conceptual Art and Photography" and "Photography and Literature," the latter a category uniquely important to Latin America. Fernandez's texts, exhaustively researched and richly illustrated, offer insight not only on each individual title and photographer, but on the multivalent social, political, and artistic histories of the region as well. This book is an unparalleled resource for those interested in Latin American photography or in discovering these heretofore unknown gems in the history of the photobook at large.

See also