Latin-American Photographers
From the streets of Mexico City to the Argentine pampas, these photographs capture moments in lives, generations, and professions that cannot be replicated
Hardworking Shoeshine Boy, 1969, George Rodriguez. Gelatin print. Getty Museum. © George Rodriguez
Body Content
For Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re showcasing six images from our photography collection that depict life in Latin America from the 1950s to the present day.
Read on to learn more about the world of these photographers as seen through their lenses.
Carnales, 2017, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio. From the series Desaparecen? Inkjet print. Getty Museum, gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. © Pablo Ortiz Monasterio
Pablo Ortiz Monasterio
Mexican photographer Pablo Ortiz Monasterio’s work captures the vibrant energy and unique characters of Mexico City, like these Blood Brothers. At first glance, these two young people are just walking together, but their affectionate embrace tells a deeper story of an unbreakable bond of friendship.
Ortiz stumbled upon this fraternal embrace in a working-class neighborhood where vans kick up dust and leave their tracks on the sandy street. “The photo,” Ortiz says, “alludes to the brotherhood and support shared by the boys strolling down the street.”
Bar El Mate, 2010, Guillermo Srodek-Hart. From the photo book Stories. Pigment-based inkjet print. Getty Museum, gift of Bruce Berman and Lea Russo. © Guillermo Srodek-Hart
Guillermo Srodek-Hart
Taken with a plate camera, wooden bellows, and interchangeable lenses, Guillermo Srodek-Hart’s El Mate Bar reveals what he found when he entered the shops in the villages of the Argentine Pampas in the late 1970s.
The details in this photograph—the photo of the soccer team, the calendar, and the waiting bottle of cognac—capture what could well be the last portrait of a disappearing world. “Every peeling wall, inherited object, scribbled to-do list, and empty glass speaks to an experience,” says the Argentine artist.
The name of the bar places the observer in the land of the gauchos, as it comes from the infusion liberally enjoyed by Argentines: mate.
Remolino, 1993, Mariana Yampolsky. Gelatin silver print. Getty Museum, gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. © Photo Archives Mariana Yampolsky. Biblioteca Francisco Xavier Clavigero, Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México
Mariana Yampolsky
“Through my lens, I discovered secret and surprising places in Mexico.”
Mariana Yampolsky came to Mexico from her hometown of Chicago, but she was so captivated by this other world that she became a citizen and made it her home.
This photograph of a solitary whirlwind exemplifies the desolate spaces that captivated Yampolsky. Her photographs are set in a Mexico that lives in the present, amid the dust that flies in the wind. “Mariana captured moments, framing them completely and perfectly,” explains Rosa Casanova, a historian at Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History).
Hardworking Shoeshine Boy, 1969, George Rodriguez. Gelatin print. Getty Museum. © George Rodriguez
George Rodríguez
George Rodríguez has documented three sides of Los Angeles: the glamour of celebrities, the political events of the Mexican American community, and the everyday life of the Latino working class. This photo belongs to his version of the big city. Like many in the barrio in the 1960s, this boy is leaving the bakery with bread to feed his family, most likely purchased with money earned from a grueling day shining shoes, barefooted.
Rodríguez closely identifies with this boy. “Workers like these kids are my heroes,” says the photographer. “My brother and I were shoeshine boys in the shoe shop my father had in [the] front part of our house at San Pedro and 7th Street.”
Ministerio I, 2015, Santiago Porter. From the series Bruma I. Inkjet print. Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council. © Santiago Porter
Santiago Porter
On Sundays and holidays between 2007 and 2017, Argentine photographer Santiago Porter captured the facades of government buildings, always very early and on cloudy days, so that the images had the same light and lack of people. In addition to the gilded doors that gleam like gold bars, this photograph of the Ministry of Economy building bears traces of crossfire from the 1955 attempted coup against President Juan Domingo Perón.
“By photographing these places,” he says, “I tried to restore their narrative potential. These marks reflect its relationship to history and are like wrinkles on a face.”
Camino al camposanto, 1993, Flor Garduño. Gelatin silver print. Getty Museum, Gift of David Fahey in memory of Jeffrey Brilliant. © Flor Garduño
Flor Garduño
Mexican photographer Flor Garduño took this photo of a father carrying his daughter in a coffin on his back in Tixán, Ecuador.
Garduño witnessed this sad moment by chance: “I ran into the person I was going to interview, and he told me that his daughter had died.” She waited in the mausoleum for hours as the family bid farewell to the little girl. Finally, when it was time to take the coffin, the parents asked her: “Aren’t you coming with us?”
During the walk, she captured this masterful image that reflects both the reverence and naturalness of her approach to photographing Indigenous people, and her keen judgment in immortalizing moments that, more than expressing what we see, convey what we feel.
