Visibility & Resistance: New Acquisitions, Contemporary Afro-Mexican Photography

Visibility & Resistance celebrates the recent acquisition of a collection of contemporary Afro-Mexican photography. By foregrounding the voices and vision of afro-descendant photographers, this exhibition aims to amplify the activism of those on the frontlines of a national movement to increase Black visibility and cultural pride in Mexico. 

The photographers featured here represent a multiplicity of afro-descendent identities. Hugo Arellanes hails from Costa Chica, a region of Mexico known for its high concentration Black Mexicans. Toumani Camara was born in Mexico City and is the child of a Senegalese father and Mexican mother. Koral Carballo and Dolores Medel are based in Veracruz, a state heavily influenced by its links to the Caribbean.

Though divergent in their practices, some common threads link their work. They frequently eschew the documentary mode–an approach that has tended to objectify Afro-Mexicans as exotic others bound by poverty and racial difference. By contrast, the photographers featured here employ conceptual approaches, digital manipulation, and fictionalized staging to reconstruct the visual field for Afro-Mexican identity. They examine self-representation, highlight the presence of African cultural traditions, meditate on the (dis)connection to place, and critique the ongoing effects of slavery and systemic racism. 

Together, this new acquisition asserts an undeniable afrodescendiente presence in Mexico and exemplifies the Schomburg Center’s capacious approach to Black identity, encompassing a multiplicity of black experience around the globe.

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Dolores Medel (b. 1982) is a Mexican photographer working with stories of family, nature and human emotions. Her work has been published in various local and international media such as Ojodepez Magazine, GUP Magazine, Tierra Adentro, Magazine of the University of Mexico, Afropunk, etc. Although occasionally working in a documentary mode, Medel, typically creates fictional scenes that draw inspiration from literature, poetry, myth and history. Her influences are vast and include photographer Sally Mann, Romantic painters Caspar David Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner, as well as writers Italo Calvino, and Nicholas Guillen, and Vincente Huidobro.

Hugo Arellanes Antonio (b. 1986), drawing on his degree in Justice and Human Rights, the artist and activist uses his camera to confront a photographic tradition that objectifies Afro-Mexicans as subjects of anthropological study. In contrast, Arellanes seeks to engender Afro-Mexican agency and self-representation. In collaboration with the activist collective Huella Negra, Arellanes promotes the visibility of Afro-Mexicans throughout Mexico.

Koral Carballo (b. 1987) is a documentary photographer, photojournalist, and visual artist based in Puebla Mexico. She studied journalism at the Universidad Popular Aútonoma del Estado de Puebla (2010); the Contemporary Photography Seminar by the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSA) and the Centro de la Imagen (2014); the Diploma in Documentary Photography at the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSA) coordinated by Joan Liftin (2019); Migration Project Development Laboratory of the Magnum Foundation at Columbia University (2018); Camp 20 photographers Mexico (2017); and the Eddie Adams Workshop XXXV (2022). Through photography, oral storytelling, and the archive Carballo investigates new narratives and visual representations of themes that intersect in the contemporary and historical context, such as necropolitical violence, Afro-descendence, and its relationship to memory.
 

Toumani Camara (b. 1990) is a photographer and graphic designer. Born in Mexico City to African immigrants, he studied fine arts at the Massana School Center of Art and Design in Barcelona, Spain (2016-2017), earned a university degree from Université Toulouse in 2016, and a diploma from the Academia de Artes Visuales in Mexico City, Mexico. Currently based in Mexico City, Cámara's work reflects on self, family, and the lives of Black people in Mexico.

Africa's Legacy in Mexico/Central America 

Call Number: Sc Photo Portfolio (Gleaton, T. Africa's legacy in Mexico/Central America)

Tony Gleaton, 1948-2015, was born in Detroit, Michigan, moved to Los Angeles as a child. After serving a tour of duty in Vietnam, he studied industrial design at the University of California, Los Angeles, and photography at the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles. In 1974, Gleaton made his way to New York to pursue a career in fashion photography; however, by 1980 he had left New York and made his way through the American West where he photographed cowboys of African, Native American, Mexican and European heritage. In 1982, he travelled to Mexico where, in 1985, he began his documentation of the modern descendants of African slaves brought to New Spain (colonial Mexico) between the 15th and 17th centuries. This project "Africa's Legacy in Mexico" was expanded in 1992-1996 to include Central and South America, becoming the project "Tengo Casi 500 Años: Africa's Legacy in Mexico, Central & South America." Gleaton died in Palo Alto, California in 2015.

This exhibition was curated by Dalila Scruggs, former Curator of Photographs and Prints division at the Schomburg Center. The acquisition was a collaboration between Dalila Scruggs and Paloma Celis Carbajal, Curator for Latin American, Iberian, and U.S. Latino Collections at NYPL, with partial support from the Mexico-United States Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (COMEXUS).

The Mexico-United States Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (COMEXUS) is a bilateral institution created in 1990, funded by the Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs in Mexico, and the State Department in the United States. Since 2021, COMEXUS is proud to collaborate with diverse public entities on both sides of the border to recognize, value and promote Mexico´s African Heritage and to acknowledge the immense contribution of African diasporas to the social and cultural fabric of both our countries.