The Latin American Photobook

The Latin American Photobook,featuring a selection of volumes from the 1920s to the present, provides revelatory perspectives on the under-charted history of Latin American photography.

A growing appreciation of the photobook has encouraged a flood of new scholarship and connoisseurship of the form. Few projects have been as surprising and inspiring as The Latin American Photobook, the culmination of a four-year, cross-continental research effort led by Horacio Fernández (Spain), author of the seminal volume Fotografia Pública (1999). Compiled with the input of a committee of researchers, scholars, and photographers—including Marcelo Brodsky (Argentina), Iatã Cannabrava (Brazil), and Martin Parr (United Kingdom)—The Latin American Photobook publicationpresents one hundred and fifty volumes from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela. The book was published in Spanish by Editorial RM, in English by Aperture Foundation and Fundación Televisa, in Portuguese by Cosac & Naify, and in French by Images en Manœuvres.

The accompanying exhibition–presented earlier in 2012 at Le Bal, Paris, and Ivorypress, Madrid, and co-produced by Aperture Foundation, Instituto Moreira Salles, Ivory Press, and Le Bal–features 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, Sergio Larraín, and many others. On view are photobooks, vintage and modern photographic prints, videos of books, maquettes, notes, and studies for mock-ups. The photobooks are divided into seven thematic sections: America Before America, History and Propaganda, Urban Photography, Photo Essays, Artist’s Photobooks, Literature and Photography, and Contemporary Photobooks. This not only allows the visitor to explore individual photobooks and photographers, but also Latin America’s manifold social, political, and art histories.

Curator Horacio Fernández is a photo-historian and author of numerous catalogs and books, including Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919–1939 (1999). He has been a senior lecturer at the Facultad de Bellas Artes in Sevilla, Spain, since 1988. Between 2004 and 2006 he was general curator of PHotoEspaña, the annual international photography festival in Madrid.

The Latin American Photobook exhibition is co-produced by Aperture Foundation, Instituto Moreira Salles, Ivory Press, and Le Bal.

The Latin American Photobook was co-published with Fundación Televisa.

The Latin American Photobook exhibition and symposium is made possible, in part, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Tinker Foundation, The Council for International Teaching and Research and the Program in Latin American Studies at Princeton University, the Instituto Moreira Salles, Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky, and the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.